


The Monster, Inside

by AbelQuartz



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Anal, Anal Play, Anxiety, BDSM, Body Hair, Confessions, Conversations, Corrupted Steven Universe, Dildos, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Femdom, Handcuffs, Kissing, Lube, Male Solo, Marriage, Married Couple, Masturbation, Masturbation in Bathroom, Mental Health Issues, Mistress, Oral Sex, Orgasm, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pegging, Romance, Sex, Sex Toys, Transformation, Uncircumcised Penis, Underwear, beach, connverse - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:01:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23914999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbelQuartz/pseuds/AbelQuartz
Summary: Through their marriage, Steven and Connie have noticed recurring images, fears emerging that they can’t control, situations that still cause them pain after all this time. The memory of that form, of the beast inside of Steven called trauma — it hurts him even today. Together, Connie and Steven work through a new phase in their marriage. Sex, love, secrets, transformation… When will enough be enough?
Relationships: Connie Maheswaran & Steven Universe, Connie Maheswaran/Steven Universe
Comments: 44
Kudos: 151





	1. Her Command

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BorkMork](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BorkMork/gifts).



> Starting 4/29, a new chapter will be uploaded every other day until completion. Enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven and Connie come home from therapy.

* * *

* * *

“Doesn’t it feel weird?”

“It feels normal.”

“That’s what’s weird about it.”

Connie watched Steven flick on the wipers and blow away the mist. He had every reason to feel that way, no matter how much Connie wanted to convince him otherwise. Couples went to therapy for all sorts of reasons all the time. They were no different in their love.

The spring rains were gentle, barely covering the Dondai in the cold. Steven drove them down the byway back into town. The headlights shone through a thousand points of light, little droplets on the road ahead of them. It was a peaceful night, a good night to talk. Connie loved these end-of-the-week meetings, no matter how difficult things got. She had to. As the weather coated them in stillness, the only things in motion were the car and the light rain. Progress was always steady.

Somehow, Connie knew they would end up near the coast again. They could install warp pads all over the world, so location wasn’t an issue. Moving to the other side of the country was made easy after an east coast marriage and an intergalactic honeymoon. All the Gems they had met over the years had come to wish them well, as well as Connie’s extended family from across the Pacific. Priyanka and Doug had had to assure them of Steven’s competence, but various tests of strength and magic were enough to convince even the most stubborn among them. Out here in northern Sequoia, they had a chance to breathe together, away from their old lives. But there was no such thing, was there. Life was always connected.

That’s why they were going to couples therapy. Steven had brought it up a bit after their fourth anniversary, asking if Connie wanted to come with him. There was so much on the back of their childhood that hadn’t come up before. Steven’s adjustments to a modern domestic life were difficult to say the least. He had to learn about when he would have hit different emotional and social milestones, how to develop hobbies with other humans, how to open a bank account and register an address and be legal again. Getting Steven a social security number had been a nightmare. 

All these things had opened up the wound of Steven’s development and questions about the past. Some nights, Connie had woken up to Steven standing in the backyard in his underwear, the walls and porch shining with pink. He would collapse into her arms every time. Connie’s strength was not without consequence in its own right. She had expressed to Steven and to their therapist the challenges of helping Steven as they became independent adults together. She had questioned whether or not she was truly self-reliant and if their marriage was healthy with their mental health issues.

Therapy was a way for them to open up about their fears and argue about their lives with a professional. Pushing these things onto each other without a mediator was like building a house with no foundation. Help came in the form of other people.

Connie looked over at her husband, the extrovert. His baby fat has turned into a gentle cushion as he had aged, curly hair growing out as wild as ever. His chest was light compared to his legs and everything in between. The manliness was just enough. Steven was only a little taller than Connie, a far cry from his mother’s side, and he seemed to be content with how he was. Connie wanted to reach over and stroke the little black prickles of stubble on his neck.

“When did you know that you were normal?” he asked. “Like, when you were a kid.”

“Gosh. Honestly, I never thought I was...normal, not like how I think you’re making it? I thought I had to be something more than average, always, and that the normal kids were the social ones who didn’t care about school. You forget, I didn’t really have friends. I knew that _that_ wasn’t normal.”

“That’s true. Man. Kid Steven didn’t really believe that. I didn’t mean like — I didn’t think you were super popular or anything, I didn’t have context for that, but I thought… I guess I thought you were just too good _not_ to have friends. Good people have friends.”

“Well, that would have been unhealthy,” Connie chuckled. “I would have hated myself more than I did.”

Steven glanced over as they pulled up to a red light. He lowered one arm and put it out face-up lying on the center console. Connie answered with her own. Steven was always warm.

“Did you really hate yourself?” he said.

“I...guess not. It’s hard to really remember? I didn’t start thinking about what it meant to be me until a little while after. When you fixed my eyes. It was — holy shit.”

“What, what is it?”

“It was literally eye-opening. Oh, my gosh. I hadn’t thought about that and it’s so ridiculously obvious. Eye-opening! It’s been almost twenty years.”

“...heh!”

Steven couldn’t resist a good pun any more than he could resist his wife. Connie laughed to herself as the man giggled and pulled forward under a green mist.

“But the thing is, you don’t think about what it means to be yourself a lot until you have to be social and get out there in the world,” Connie said. “School does that with getting other kids around but it isn’t, like, meditative like you had to be growing up. This is so hard to describe.”

“I think I know what you mean,” said Steven, squeezing her hand.

“After I met you, I didn’t want to be normal. Forget normal. I wanted to be a character, I wanted to be in danger, I wanted to go on adventures. You know that.”

“I know that I wasn’t normal, but I didn’t know what I wanted for a while. You know _that_.”

Steven had returned from his interstate road trip just after Connie had finished her first college semester. His frequent visits had reminded Connie of what life might be like after school. The boy with the rock in his belly was so unlike anyone else she had met while at college, and all her colleagues knew and mentioned it to her. Convincing them that her ‘homeschooled’ friend was worth her time was difficult. There was elitism, stability, promises of short-term romantic fulfillment that she couldn’t get with Steven’s travels, all sorts of factors that made life rocky for Connie as she powered through. But she finished school with flying colors and had kissed Steven immediately after the graduation ceremony was over, and they talked about what those years had meant to them. 

While Connie had been getting her degrees, Steven had been using his road trip experience and natural skills to help Greg Universe in managerial positions as a roadie, touring the music industry and getting hands-on experience. A life on the road had helped him even take an international metal tour, from which Steven learned that ear piercings always healed up and tattoos absorbed into his skin. It was enough to let him be content with a life of music, away from the hustle and bustle of Gem culture he had forced himself into as a teenager. Their move to Sequoia had come from a place of necessity. Steven loved the nature of the state, and Connie fell in love with case work and social services. Greg bought them a house near the coastal city of Moonrise, and there they stayed.

Moonrise was close enough to the ocean to be an easy drive, close enough to the city to give them an urban flair, and sheltered enough in the old-growth forests to give them a sense of isolation. Steven and Connie’s neighborhood was right next to the school district where Steven did his part-time teaching, but each individual house was separated by thick patches of pine trees and dense shrubbery. They were a ten-minute drive from everywhere they wanted to be, and a warp away from anywhere in the galaxy. Installation of the warp pad was a legal hassle, but Connie had gotten the job done on Earth. The Zircons, as helpful as they wanted to be, were too unfamiliar with how things were done in the court system.

As they drove past the elementary school, Connie let herself be thankful that this was a kind of normal. Steven was adjusting, just like she was. They loved each other. As they entered their thirties, life was starting to even out. No matter what species he was or what the past had brought, Steven’s traumas impacted his humanity, and Connie knew her own past was not clean either. They had to come together.

The turn signal blinked. The Universe-Maheswaran property had a single light on outside, joined by the automatic floodlight as Steven pulled in front of the garage and pressed the button to open the door. The sound of tires on wet blacktop turned into sandy crunching. Connie’s coupe sat next to the Dondai. Steven let go of his wife to turn the car off.

“I think!— I think it’s a night to make some tea,” Steven declared.

Before they exited the car, Connie leaned over and grabbed Steven by the jacket, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. He swiftly turned and kissed her back, touching the edge of her mouth. The two paused.

Connie offered another kiss, more directly on Steven’s lips, and let her mouth linger for a moment. It was a question, a test in silent communication. The woman loved being able to speak a language without words. It could only be called love. Steven answered with another kiss, parting his mouth just enough to fit against Connie’s openness like a puzzle piece. Outside, the rain turned from a drizzle into a gentle patter as the storm rolled in.

The two had to break the kiss to leave the car, but as soon as Steven came around the side he practically pushed Connie against the Dondai to smooch her again. She gripped her husband’s waist and pulled him close, eyes closed and mouth open. The deep kiss told her everything that the bulge in Steven’s jeans didn’t. Water seeped through the back of her pants and hair as she tasted Steven’s exhaustion in her mouth. They rose together in a single breath, mouths connected and communicative without a single word. Tea could wait.

Being picked up was a rare treat these days. Connie loved the way Steven grunted as if it was any effort at all to hoist her into the air by one hand. She loved the way it felt to wrap her legs around him and hug him close, kissing his neck as he stumbled inside to the couch. The house was cold, but there were blankets on the sofa, and an automatic lighting system that lit up in welcome as they made their way indoors. The door to the garage slammed shut behind them. Connie felt Steven’s heavy breath against her.

He sat down on the couch lightly, floating down until their body weight was pressed against the cushions. Connie straddled her husband and ground against him, pressing in one more kiss. Both his hands rose underneath her shirt until they touched the rim of her bra. She broke the kiss.

“Don’t, just — I want it now.”

“Now-now?”

“Take me, Steven.”

The words were new. Connie chastised herself for a moment in the second she had before regaining control of her body and mind. Steven, of course, moved slowly and fumbled to unbutton Connie’s pants. He pulled them down carefully and was gentle as he slipped his hand down the front of Connie’s panties. The warmth made her hold herself against his shoulders, closing her eyes. Her husband curled a single finger and rubbed in a slow circle on top, as if afraid to push himself farther.

Connie could sense something inside of him, just on the surface, just like he wasn’t quite inside of her. She opened her eyes and looked at Steven. The man was studying her face as he eased one hand on her hips, and Connie almost felt broken by the confusion on his face. No, this was more than confusion. This was uncertainty.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

“I don’t…”

He swallowed and closed his eyes. He kept his hands against the woman’s groin, rubbing gently, but didn’t penetrate beyond a fingertip. Connie dug her hands into his shoulders, firm but not unpleasantly so. Sex could wait. Steven ducked his head and furrowed his eyebrows. He was still hard, Connie could tell. The two remained suspended for a moment.

“I just had a bad thought,” Steven said, “about hurting you. I don’t know where it came from but I just got so scared.”

“Hurting me during sex?”

“Y-yeah. I’m sorry, I know, it’s stupid —”

“It’s not. Your worries are worth talking about. It’s okay to talk about them. You couldn’t possibly hurt me.”

Steven looked up and removed his hand from Connie’s pants. He swallowed and shook his head, arching his back against the couch. Both hands rubbed up and down her hips. The tips of his fingers grazed the skin above her waistline. Connie could wait for him, for as long as it took. She knew what he was thinking.

There was the memory Steven had come back to in therapy, the memory that was fresh in his mind and as recently jarring as it had ever been. When Steven had turned into a monster on that one day when he was seventeen, he had exploded into feeling, wrecked his body and soul for those small moments. He seemed to have forgotten about what happened, but the memories came up in moments of anger, moments of doubt, and in therapy they had talked about what Steven had felt when he had transformed. The emotions were strong like chains, and threatened to bring him down again and again, so weighty were they when they came into being. There was nothing to be done but talk about them. Steven had offhandedly mentioned losing control, how it felt to be out of it. It was coming up again.

Connie slid off of Steven’s lap and stood up. The man released his wife and rubbed his face in shame.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “Let’s just get ready for bed.”

The woman’s hand came down before her brain could process it. Steven yelped as she gripped between his legs and squeezed. Connie leaned over and looked Steven in his wide, darting eyes as she rested her palm on the thickness, clenched gently and unclenched. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Connie closed her eyes and ran her tongue along the inside of Steven’s mouth.

Whatever she was doing, this was practically on autopilot. Connie felt the arousal and the need to fuck, but Steven’s emotions had always come first. If he said no, he would say no, and that would be the end of it. She leaned back again and knelt in front of Steven, parting from his lips, her hand still between his legs as she gauged his reaction. Both his hands were gripping the couch cushions. He made no motions to stop Connie as she unbuttoned his jeans deftly, all the while staring up with defiance.

Steven needed her in control. He wanted to have sex, but he was scared of his own inhibitions, the way his mind was reacting. Connie slapped herself mentally. As if she could cure him, as if this needed to be cured at all — what was she doing. As she jerked Steven’s jeans and underwear down to his knees, he jumped slightly, biting his lip and burning up in the face. The way his fingers twitched on the sofa made Connie’s heart beat faster. His cock bounced slightly with the shifting, rock-hard as Connie suspected, with a thin trail of precum already trailing down over the edge of his hood.

Blowing Steven had its own challenges. The relatively short length meant that she could get to the base easily if she wanted, but he was almost as thick as a soda can. Her mouth could only do so much before it started to ache. Connie took a shuddering breath and reached up to fondle the familiar genitals. She pulled back the skin to expose the head, cradling Steven’s sack in her other hand. Steven squirmed and pulled his legs apart as far as his pants would allow.

“Do you want me, Steven?”

_What? What sort of question was that—_

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “Always.”

Before she could say anything more, Connie let go and reached to grab Steven by the knees. Forcefully, she pulled him down until he was slouched on the couch, his jacket rumpled up by his neck and his legs bent precariously. The woman practically climbed over his jeans until she could smell the hot skin right underneath her nose. Opening her mouth, Connie closed her lips over the smoothness of Steven’s head and hummed in the pleasure of salt.

“O- _oh_ , gosh, Connie…”

He was so warm on her tongue. Steven was always warm, always a source of heat and heart for her, everywhere on her body. The gray winters passed quickly with his nakedness wrapped around her. Their showers together were always heated with his love over the sensation of the water. Connie lowered her head as the cock slid into her mouth, forcing her to open up as she took in the length. Her nose touched the tip of Steven’s pubic hair; the width prevented her going all the way, but that was the price of thickness.

Getting into a rhythm was something Connie had learned over the years. Steven was a little thicker in the middle than the base, wide all the way down but especially at the head. She knew his privates as good as she did her own. Her head moved at just the right speed, lips sliding up and down Steven’s shaft, putting pressure on him with her mouth. 

The woman had to wonder if their stamina was shared with Steven’s healing powers, the latent effects of his liquids. It was always liquids — the tears, the spit, the sweat. What did his precum do as it seeped around her lips and tongue? Did it contribute to her jaw’s strength despite the girth? Or perhaps Connie was merely spurred now by the way that Steven moaned her name wordlessly, the way he held on and heaved his belly with exertion, the hands that came and rubbed his inner thighs. Connie had her own fingers gently squeezing the heft of Steven’s sack, her right hand pressed into the hairy base as she sucked.

There was pleasure in the control. She had forced Steven down, made him come to terms with what he wanted, and Connie worried as she sucked. Blowjobs weren’t inherently pleasurable, but the taste of her husband was always lovely. It was about the power to hold Steven down, the way he refused to move. He complied with her. It was sexy. Steven always listened to her, but this was different. Connie loved the way that Steven accepted himself. Her gag reflex tripped, and Connie choked a little, drawing herself back up to the top. These thoughts were interrupting her process.

She didn’t have much longer to go. She knew Steven was close by the way his breathing increased, the way little whines seeped into his voice. There was something about a big man whimpering that made Connie redouble her efforts, sliding her mouth back and forth forcefully and sucking as hard as she could. The woman tugged on the skin of Steven’s balls, pulling them as they edged up. On her tongue, the head must have been the color of a plum, so swollen and rotund in her mouth.

His hands dug into the meat of his thighs and his legs quivered with the force of the impending orgasm. Steven’s body shook underneath Connie, completely within her control. The taste was the same taste as the sky before a storm.

“Oh Connie, oh, Connie, f-fffa- _ah!_ ”

The moans started on a musical high, ringing in the pulse of Connie’s ears. The first shots plopped out onto her tongue in a healthy, heavy squirt, a thick deposit that kept coming even as she slowed her strokes and bobs. Steven’s climaxes were always hefty, seeping with muscular force inside and on top of her, every time. Connie sucked and swallowed the load as it filled her mouth, as Steven’s body contorted with pleasure. Her right hand pressed into the now-matted hair, wet with excess spittle and sweat.

Even when the orgasm had physically receded and Connie had swallowed her second mouthful, Steven was still hard inside her mouth and twitching with electric nerves. The man had to take several breaths, squeezing himself as Connie let go. She brought both hands up to his own and held them on top of his quaking knuckles as they steadied. The cock softened second by second in Connie’s mouth until it was harmless again, dark but shrinking, filled but receding into Steven’s natural state. Minutes passed as Connie massaged the organ with her mouth, teasing Steven with her tongue as she coated him in his own semen and slurped it off again. His sharp little breaths were enough to tell her he was still sensitive.

Connie withdrew her mouth and let the penis slide back out. The woman pushed herself to her feet, stretching her legs as she looked over her husband. He sat there on the couch, clearly dazed but red in the face, with his pants down and his shirt rumpled. Steven opened his eyes and looked up at Connie as if he wasn’t sure what had just happened. 

“T-thank you…”

“Go make us some tea.”

Steven pushed himself upright, wobbling as he stood with his pants around his ankles in front of Connie. She kissed him on his stubbly jawline, hands crossed over her chest. Connie smiled at him, putting her weight on one leg. The man’s grin was as shaky as his legs as he pulled his pants and underwear back up. He didn’t even buckle or button as he made his way across the living room and into the kitchen. Connie kept her smile as she walked past the guest bathroom to the bedroom.

The kitchen was far enough away that Connie didn’t bother closing the door as she stepped through. They only closed doors for the bathroom anyway, since they were alone together in this house. There were different reasons for privacy, different ways of going about their lives. As they changed clothes and ate food and did errands, everything was open. Connie stopped in front of the mirror in the corner.

The full-length reflection showed her as the late twentysomething she had always wanted to be since she got married. Her hair was dry and a little frizzy from the mist. The long-sleeved t-shirt had been enough earlier in the day, but they had had to turn the heater on in the car ride back. Her pants were still unbuttoned at the top, and the black edge of her panties was visible. Connie felt like smiling, but when her eyes met her reflection, her face was stoic, even worried.

But she shouldn’t be. Connie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, reaching down to pull her shirt off before she tossed it into the hamper next to the bed, a dramatic revelation to the cool air. Her skin felt tingly with the atmosphere around them, with the impending storm prodding their window with the rhythm of rain. Falling asleep would be easy tonight. It was always easy with Steven by her side.

She would have to talk to him about this feeling. When she opened her eyes again, Connie saw a face she hadn’t seen since her sword fighting days as a child. There was a wicked confidence to the furrow of her brow, a degree of control that made her step back and tighten her lips as she studied herself. What was this manifestation? It was that control, that word and that sensation, the way she had pushed Steven down and made him comply. What a strange way to phrase it. The woman’s stomach twitched with the notion of force. She didn’t want that.

But Steven wouldn’t have allowed that. They had talked about that before marriage, during therapy, from the beginning of their time together. Boundaries were necessary and were set constantly. If Connie pushed, Steven had the choice to push back or to let the boundary shift. This time, he had let her move it in a more forceful direction.

He had to get over his fears one way or another. Connie couldn’t imagine a man like Steven hurting anyone in his life, but she knew his imagination went to far darker places. Standing in her bra, Connie slid her pants to the ground and shoved her shoes and socks off with them. His mind made him vulnerable to all sorts of pain she couldn’t control. 

Or could she? The thoughts that passed Connie’s mind traced back to internet articles, parts of pornography that she had only thought about in passing. It was all silly, and all possible, and all experimental. Steven wanted control. He enjoyed it. He was making tea right now on an order. Connie smirked at herself and picked up a bathrobe that was folded on the end of the bureau. As she slid it over her shoulders, she felt the confidence seeping over her like the lavender seeped into the boiling water. They could talk later. The semblance of a plan was coming to light inside her mind.


	2. His Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The couple talks about the previous night.

* * *

Steven strummed the last chord, then let the guitar ring out. Aaron raised his hands to give a little golf clap, and his father chuckled and followed suit. Steven smirked as he plucked an errant couple notes to finish the song off before patting the guitar appreciatively.

Lessons from home were a rarity, but not everything could be done through the public schools. Programs and classroom guidance was something Steven only did from time to time regardless, and when he offered lessons through the grapevine, he hadn’t expected homeschooled students like Aaron right off the bat. He had accepted, as long as the parents were around to watch and ask questions, and many of the tween homeschoolers were more than okay with their parent by their side. It made lessons go a lot more smoothly than they had done in some classrooms.

It was only the third year that Steven offered these music lessons at all. He didn’t need to, not with Connie working full-time and his dad offering help on that front. The Maheswaran-Universe household lived comfortably. Steven liked teaching music because of moments like this, where he got to look at Aaron and his father and appreciate that the boy was asking questions and learning on his own time.

“I think that wraps us up for today,” Steven said, “unless there’s anything else on your guys’ mind. Keep practicing that chord progression, and we may get to the blues sooner than you think!”

“Actually, I was kinda wondering about that?” Aaron asked.

“What’s up, buddy?”

“When you wanna write a song, where do you start? I like poetry and stuff and I want to get into writing songs as I’m learning guitar but I don’t know where to begin.”

That was a good question. Steven opened his mouth, and the garage door sounded off. Connie must be home for the afternoon a little early. Aaron’s father glanced to the door and back to Steven, but the man waved it off. 

“It’s Connie,” he reassured. “You guys have met.”

“Right! Yes.”

“So, about songwriting, Aaron? It’s the same question of where you start with poetry. When you think about someone writing a poem, they have an idea, something they want to say. But it’s the way they say it that matters.”

The door leading to the garage opened and Connie stepped inside. She was wearing a professional red blouse and a tan slitted skirt, her hair tied up in a messy bun. She looked like the day had been long, and that she needed home more than ever. The woman looked at Aaron and his father with a start, then smiled and walked towards the kitchen counter. This was nothing new. Many students knew Steven’s married life. Connie set her work bag down and walked over to Steven.

“Hey, Aaron, hello Mr. Dowling. Lessons go okay?” she asked

“Yeah!”

She bent down, draping one arm across Steven’s shoulder. The kissed quickly, just on the cheek, before she straightened up and headed down into the bedroom. Steven felt his heart bounce for just a second, but that was the price he had to pay for being married to the most wonderful woman in the world. Not every second could be spent with her or thinking about her. That was the hardest part, but the part he had to learn the fastest.

Steven thought about their dinner plans and what he could make, trying not to get too distracted with his student here. He turned back with his hands up, clasping them as he thought about the process.

“The way you say things. Right! So, the thing is, every human being is different, okay? There is no other you. The trick of it all is to write something that shows that, something that only you can write. But there are only so many words and only so many ways to say things that make sense, so there’s the hard part: how do I say something original when everyone else has already used all the words?

“Short answer, you can’t. But you’re not singing in a language nobody else understands. You’re singing to the world, to the people you love. How you express that will matter to them. Yes, you should write as originally as you can, but what always matters in the end is the connection you have with the people who are listening to you. That’s where you start: with the understanding that you want to say something and people want to listen. If you write from the heart, then the people who love you will hear that and love you back all the more.”

Steven tried to remember the last time he had written a song all the way through. These days, most of what he did was composition, finding pieces for beginners and writing down tabs and chords. When he had applied for a position with the school, he had demonstrated his technical knowledge in a way that impressed everyone on the board, even though he had had no formal training. He had sung some cover of some song, on-key to perfection, and had improvised all the tabs for it, then covered the same thing on piano from memory. It was easy when he knew where all the notes were, but he understood the impression that it made all the same. Original works, though, those eluded him. A question like the one Aaron had asked could only be answered through improvisation. Steven wondered about getting back into writing, even into writing poetry. Maybe they should get a piano for the house.

“We have a concert coming up next month where all the homeschool kids get together and play stuff, and I wanna play an original song,” Aaron said. “If I bring in some music and some writing next week, could you help me put it together?”

“Aaron, it would be my honor.”

The goodbyes were easy and the payment was all electronic. Steven knew he was undercharging, but what else could he do? Once they were all packed up, Steven waved the Dowlings off and closed the door. He sighed, walking over to scoop up his music books and put the guitar away. Tonight felt like a nacho night, something with pulled chicken and a nice spicy sauce, plenty of cool lettuce. He wondered if Connie’s adventurous taste buds could handle some Fire Salt.

She came out of the bedroom in her sweatpants with her hair down, her blouse untucked and messy. Connie slid over the floor towards Steven in her socks, sighing with her arms open. Steven opened his in return, and the two embraced and rocked for a moment. The man growled through his throat like a wild animal as he hugged his wife before kissing the top of her head.

“How was work, honey?” he asked. 

“Decent,” she sighed. “We’re getting some questions about Gem zoning and the kindergarten reclamation out east, various permits and ecological benefits. There’s a nonprofit that wants to do soil analysis and figure out what can be saved.”

“Wow, they really want to work on that with Gems?”

“You got the ball rolling, I hope you know.”

True, he had to concede. Without his involvement, there would still be that odd schism between humans and Gems, a weird ground where their various territories were hush-hush and the ruins simply ruins. Since he had left Beach City, smaller gatherings of Gems had sprung up traveling down the east coast, with word reaching through to the Crystal Gems and the townsfolk there. He had only had to warp back once to shoot another commercial for humans explaining that this was a new era of Gemkind, that things would be different. 

He also had to admit that a group of semi-immortal humanoid aliens weren’t the most approachable at times. Still, the humans had adjusted in Beach City — why couldn’t they elsewhere? At one point, Steven had considered going back and making Gem diplomacy his full-time job. Flashbacks had put an end to that, and Connie had urged him to find his happiness elsewhere.

“Maybe I did,” he murmured, “maybe I did.”

“How was your day?”

“I spent a lot of time tending to the garden, and we finished off this week’s meal plan so I thought about that but only a little. Got a stationary ride in, read a little, had a nap, called dad about insurance before Aaron came over.”

“Sounds like you were busy,” Connie said.

“It was pretty packed. But it was a nice enough day to get things done.”

Connie turned her head up and the two kissed for real. Steven had been waiting to press his lips against Connie’s all day. Even when he was napping, he had dreams in watercolor about holding the woman’s hand, growing old with her, transforming into plants and animals and abstractions. His dreams moved slower the older he got. It was a strange sensation.

The kiss, however, was familiar. Steven found home in her touch. When they broke apart, he brought his thumb up to press into the corner of her mouth, stroking across her face. They smiled at one another as she turned to the side, walking around the island to the fridge. Steven suppressed a deep sigh as he watched her take a glass out of the dish drain and press it against the water dispenser.

“Hey, I wanted to talk about the other day,” she said, turning and leaning against the counter.

“The other day? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong! Nothing’s wrong. It’s just, about, when you were worried, when we came in and played. We didn’t end up discussing that after tea.”

That was, regrettably, true, and Steven took a seat at the island as he nodded grimly. He had made the tea just as he was asked, keeping in mind how Connie liked to drink it, a formula he had memorized since they were preteens. They had spoken about what was going to happen over the next week and their thoughts on the rain as they slowly edged into bed and into sleepiness.

Where those worries had come from was not a mystery. Steven was well aware that talking through therapy brought up memories to the forefront that hadn’t been there in the day. Going to therapy, as useful as it was, meant uncovering the old wounds; they couldn’t be treated any other way. It was impossible to explain how he had felt.

When he had turned into a monster, he had destroyed his house in a violent altercation, torn the walls away and ruined the windows. The repairs that the beach house had gone through in its lifetime were incredible, and they had mostly been his fault, if he remembered correctly. All that destruction was for destruction’s sake, a ruinous wake, something he realized wasn’t normal as he had been on the road. In the moments that he had turned, all he knew was destruction. There was nothing else in his mind, and recalling the specifics still hurt him. Even now, he had to lean on the granite top and breathe to stop himself becoming pink.

“Did you like it?”

“The...sex? Of course, it was — I liked it a lot, you felt it.”

“Did you like it when I made you keep going?”

That was a curveball, and Steven had to look up and stare at Connie as he thought of his answer. The woman swished her water and took a drink, studying Steven, poised like she was a lawyer and Steven was on the witness stand. He had to wrack his brain for how to speak.

Sensations of liking and disliking were still hazy in his mind. He clearly remembered feeling a sense of guilt as he tried to stop Connie, as he felt the triggers fade. Letting that misery consume him was easy, and there was no other way to make it go away than time. Steven hadn’t wanted to go to bed, but it was the right thing to do for his brain, or so he thought. Connie’s handling of the situation was forceful, and it had kept Steven stewing on the couch wondering what he could do, feeling powerless in Connie’s mouth and hands. He had wanted to rest a hand her head and stroke the side of her cheek, but in that moment she had glowed like the sun, untouchable and nuclear.

“I felt strange, but it wasn’t a bad strange,” he said after a second. “I’d felt...guilty, about stopping sex, but I didn’t really want to stop. I just felt the worry and the gunk in my head, and it… That’s why, I guess, and you just shook it up, and I’m not sure how to feel, I’ll be honest.”

“Here’s — I have a kinda stupid question that’s also very serious.”

Connie walked over opposite Steven on the island, and put her glass down, leaning over with a dark and furrowed brow, her mouth a tight line.

“Do you think you’re submissive?” she asked.

She wasn’t asking about the day-to-day life. Steven had to think. He leaned on the counter and took a deep breath, blowing out his nose. There were factors. He couldn’t look up, for example, and meet Connie’s eyes right now. His tongue felt swollen, as if any words he said were fuel for something Connie would say in response, to give her the final word. The thought of pleasing his wife, of loving her in a way that only she could feel, took over his heart and his loins.

Outside of the bedroom, they were equals. On the couch, something had happened that Steven had to parse now. His hands had felt trapped by his decision, paralyzed with want. All he had thought about on the couch was giving Connie what she wanted, making her happy, and it had frozen him to his core. The orgasm had been for her sake, her pleasure, even though it was all mental. When he was told to make tea, something in his brain had snapped like a rubber band, just like it was doing now. Steven mouthed an indistinct swear under his breath as he looked up and saw Connie smiling wryly.

“Oh,  _ gawd, _ ” he muttered.

“I always had a feeling, you know.”

“This is… I never thought about it. I mean, look, it doesn’t happen all the time, it didn’t happen for a while, it’s just — it’s come up, and — it’s not that I don’t want it to happen, I’m just not sure what to do now.”

“We talk about it,” Connie said. “And we talk about where we go from here.”

“I don’t want one of those relationships where you treat me like crap. Those movies and sitcoms make me feel so uncomfortable.”

“Steven, that’s not what it means. I would never.”

“Well, what does it mean, then? What do I need to do? And Connie, does this make YOU happy?” he asked.

It wasn’t until Connie reached over and stroked his cheek that he realized how scared his voice was and how loud he was being. Was he? He couldn’t tell. Steven’s pulse beat in his ears, and he forced another breath to calm himself down. The stroke was enough to tell him that he was loved. Of course Connie loved him, and he loved her — how could anything else be true? The man heaved a deep sigh into his wife’s wrist and turned his face to smell her skin, the familiarity of her touch.

“It makes me happy because it makes you happy,” Connie said. “And even then, I’m not sure of my own limits because I don’t know yours. But Steven, I want to push you to let go of that feeling that’s been holding you back.”

“I think I know what you mean. Hurting you. Going too far.”

“What if I took you there? What if I led you to that place you were afraid of?”

“...I’d follow you anywhere.”

There was nothing truer. Steven took Connie’s hand in his own and curled her fingers, raising her knuckles to his mouth to kiss her. He kept his eyes closed and his head bowed. The warmth of her body rested against his lips for a moment, just a touch, before he lowered it. With his head still down, he held Connie’s hands until he deigned to raise his eyes. Through it all, he couldn’t help but smile.

The woman raised a single finger and pushed it against the tip of Steven’s nose. A snort came out despite himself, and the two descended into a giggle fit. When they weren’t ready to have sex, when they were just being themselves, they couldn’t hold back the joy. That was what warmed Steven’s heart now and what he loved the most about Connie. They had the peace of mind to make each other happy in all sorts of ways. Their comfort was in their actualization, or at least the journey there. Steven let Connie’s hand down as she clapped her hands together.

“Do I call you ‘mistress’ now?” he asked.

“I’m working on that. There’s a lot we have to talk about.”

“Liiiiiike what?”

“Like toys, activities, safewords, what kind of stuff to do, where we begin — just everything!”

“How long has this been on your mind? Why didn’t you bring it up before?”

“Because I didn’t know if you were ready,” Connie said, practically skipping as she came around the counter to hug Steven from behind. “And I haven’t thought about it _ that _ much. Just when it started feeling good.”

“When you forced me down, made me cum, then had me make tea?”

“And it was very tasty tea.”

She nuzzled into Steven’s neck as the man leaned back into the hug and closed his eyes. Thoughts of dinner started to fade as a new hunger arose, a new curiosity. His knowledge of BDSM was limited, and he knew Connie’s was too. They had only seen passing media, things like the  _ Passions of Xanxor _ and light erotica, references in sitcoms and movies that went over their heads. Actually trying these things together meant learning about them.

Steven imagined himself in a leather vest and thong, Connie in a corset with a whip, him tied up in an ‘X’ on a wooden wheel with an apple in his mouth. The image was so ridiculous, but he had to let out a sigh at the thought of Connie in that tight outfit. Boots and black and chains all suited her well. Even without that, even without a shred of anything on, she was a powerful woman.

That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it. Steven loved the fact that Connie was powerful. She could take charge and take control, order him around and give him direction when he felt directionless. She could bring up suggestions and force him to open up about his thoughts and feelings. Some of the best experiences he had in their therapy sessions was when Connie had pressed him to tell the truth and speak even when it was uncomfortable. What could he give a woman like that in return? Whatever it was, Steven knew he had to give his love first and foremost. Every good thing that followed was because of that.

“If you think that’s tasty,” Steven murmured, “how do you feel about some zesty chicken nachos?”

“Do we still have some of that guacamole?”

“You bet we do, just for you.”

He turned his head and leaned back on the island chair, and the two of them moaned softly into each other’s kiss. Steven tasted Connie’s satisfaction in her spit. He was ready to cook anything her heart desired. Already, he saw himself in an apron and nothing else, covered as he baked the chicken, bareness open for Connie’s hands. He wondered if, as they kissed, she could feel the burning in his cheeks.


	3. Her Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven and Connie try something in the bedroom.

* * *

Maybe it was too much. Connie looked at the bed and tapped a finger to her chin. There were about a dozen to choose from that were actually shaped like penises, and a few smaller introductory ones with vibrating functions and different textures. They ranged in colors from blue to pink to pale flesh and multicolored monstrosities, from the size of Steven’s own cock up to a thick beast of a dildo with a suction cup at the end. That probably wasn’t going to be much use this early in the game.

Steven nudged her thigh. He had been ordered to not speak, which was a pity, but Connie needed to think and she liked the way that Steven growled and chirruped and used his throat when he wasn’t allowed to use words. The man was naked save for neoprene-lined cuffs on his wrists and ankles, used as weights for now until Connie got the locks.

Rope bondage had been fun, but their experiments had turned into an art form rather than a sexual act, with Steven taking an hour to do some elaborate ties over Connie’s bare torso. Over the past few days, they had experimented with blindfolding, restraint, tickling, spanking, all switching from one partner to the other. Connie enjoyed the sensations, the thick smack of the impact on her thighs from the paddle, the restraint Steven had to use to keep his strength in check.

The harder they got, though, the more obvious it became that Steven was the one who was enjoying being under control. With ropes ties up and pulled around his cock and balls, he had whined wordlessly until Connie stroked him to completion, his sack the color of a late sunset. Even though no restraint could truly hold him, he remained obedient as he laid and was ridden slowly, twisting his arms and legs on the bed. Steven had almost bled from the spanking, folded over Connie’s lap and begging for harder hits. The rubber-lined paddle had almost snapped at its core from the last hit, and Connie had felt Steven leaking profusely underneath her. The buildup, as they had cleaned, had lasted almost two hours and neither one of them had noticed.

The couple had had to talk about pain. Steven hadn’t been aware how much of an impact he liked and how much he was enjoying himself. The days of experimentation had been scary to him, he said, and they had to draw the line somewhere.

“I don’t want to end up hurting myself again,” he had said the day after. “And… I don’t want you to feel as though you’ve gone too far. Connie, this is all so new, and it’s strange, but it makes sense. I’ve never had a sexual thought without you.”

At least, he hadn’t seemed to have had one without her in mind; Connie could believe it. They watched movies and more or less laughed over the romantic and overly sexual aspects, and any takeaways were done together. They griped over body image and forced beauty standards together, then kissed together, then made love together because that’s what they wanted. This was merely a new way of expression, one that Connie was just beginning to understand herself.

She didn’t enjoy hurting Steven like that. She found herself enjoying his pleasure, and when the pain became pleasure, it became about guidance more than control. Leading Steven was sexy. Having such a powerful and beautiful man wanting to please her and wanting to degrade himself for her sake was arousing. And it was a different manner of arousal, touching the different parts of her brain, like the way she would crave salts and sweets at different times. Some of their bondage experiments had resulted in them merely laying down and kissing each other, content to leave and be in each other’s arms. The vanilla sex they had had over the past week — and there was a lot of sex — was just as fulfilling, but in a different manner.

Today was a salty day over a sweet day. Connie pulled her robe open and turned to the man on his knees next to her. Steven looked up and chewed on his lip, nervous and hopeful and as wide-eyed as he had ever been. 

“You’re all ready for me, baby?” Connie said.

Steven nodded. Connie stepped forward and grabbed the back of Steven’s head, forcing it between her legs. His tongue was already out and ready to lap up the length of the slit, magical saliva trailing between the lips as he was pushed into the pussy.

The man ate with gusto, as he always had, with an edge of neediness here that Connie adored. His neck was bent as he made his way up, craning himself to get into his lover’s crevices, sucking on the folds obediently. Steven knew every inch of Connie’s body, and his lips pulled at them as his tongue pushed, rhythmically pleasuring the woman as only he knew how. His hands remained obediently on the ground. Only Connie could touch him.

She let her head roll back as she raised a leg to the bed, spreading herself slowly for Steven’s convenience. He had always been eager when it came to pleasuring her like this. She could feel him seek out the entrance with his tongue, questioning himself before moving his lips up to worship her clit and kiss it with an open mouth. The first time, she had had to guide him through the basic anatomy, and years later he was such an expert that Connie didn’t have to say a word as the sound of gentle slobbering filled the air. But it helped anyway.

“That’s a good boy,” she crooned, “a boy who knows his place. You like worshipping your mistress, Steven? You like the taste of me?”

The whine that radiated up through Connie’s pelvis almost brought her to the edge immediately. Sometimes, Steven really didn’t know how powerful he was. It was incredible to think of such power, the strongest living being on the face of the planet, buried between her legs and forcing his tongue inside of her. The spit tingled, magical as it was, though there was nothing to heal. Connie had to force herself not to shudder. 

There would be more pleasure to come. As much as she hated to do so, Connie reached down and grabbed Steven’s hair with her fist, easing him away. Drool ran down his chin as he swallowed, smiling from ear to ear and breathing heavily. Connie’s heart pounded as she felt liquid slide down her bare thigh.

“Hands, knees, bed,” the woman ordered.

Steven climbed up like a cat onto the mattress. A pillow was already waiting for him to sink his face into as he lowered himself and raised his rear to his wife. The phallus brigade wobbled next to him. Clear fluid jiggled in the pop-cap bottle in the middle of the menagerie. Connie threw the robe to the floor and placed both her outstretched hands on Steven’s cheeks.

They had both done their research on anal sex. The prostate was fascinating to Steven, and Connie had cut her nails to the quick. A finger in the shower had been enough to get over the initial discomfort, especially when Steven had nearly frozen at the insertion. Connie’s slender fingers could easily slip inside, especially with lubrication and preparation. Getting ready was a necessity. Steven’s hole was scrubbed pink, tense as Connie pushed her hands into the muscles to spread him apart. The dark hairs on Steven’s legs and ass made him seem furrier than he actually was, but the bush around his balls was real. Connie lowered her head.

The first experimental lick was enough to make Steven bury his face in the bed and whine. Connie’s warm tongue gently pressed against the hole, wetting it like Steven had wet her. She flicked the muscle and felt her husband quiver underneath her. Every part of him was so sensitive. Steven loved to be touched. When they had come together in the bedroom for the first time as a married couple, Connie had actually been surprised at how much Steven loved the little touches, the stimuli. It was no surprise now, of course, and she should have expected him to feel that way; being together now meant that she could elaborate on the process. 

The woman let her spit collect before slathering it with her tongue on Steven’s ass, right in the middle, poking into the meat of his hole. She could hear his mouth muted as he bit the sheet and whimpered, every muscle in his body shaking with delight. He was warm, burning with embarrassment as his wife rimmed him. Connie ate him softly, parting her lips to stroke along the coarse hairs. When she finally drew away, the man squeezed his hole tightly, clenching the redness in front of Connie’s face.

“Gentle, Steven,” she said, moving two fingers to the center. “Tell me if it’s too much. Spread your legs.”

He did exactly as he was told. Connie reached underneath with her left hand, stroking her husband’s cock softly. The man was dripping onto the comforter, just enough for a couple clear drops, but the shaft bulged in his own skin. When Connie pressed, Steven took a deep breath and forced the muscles to relax. She felt the pressure of her fingers on the sphincter, aided by her own saliva, and the gentle give as she slipped her middle and pointer inside of her husband.

The man’s moan nearly shook the bed. The air was filled with his emotions as his wife toyed with his hole. He was as warm as sunlight and tight as a knot. Connie rubbed her fingers gently along the walls of Steven’s anus, murmuring under her breath.

“Good boy, Steven. That’s a good boy…”

Connie had to stretch her middle finger, pressed as it was against Steven’s rear end, to find the groove of his prostate. Since Steven was a bigger man, it was deeper than she had anticipated, but there it was underneath her fingertip. She wasn’t sure if Steven felt it or not yet. The woman rubbed Steven’s cock softly, sliding the skin over the bulging head and back again, massaging him inside and out. Steven huffed along, the words and the begging frozen in his throat obediently.

He was ready. Connie pushed softly on the button, massaging the hard lump inside of Steven’s rear. Steven pressed his face into the bed and practically wailed, his hands balled into tight fists, his genitals tense with the pleasure of it all. Massaging Steven’s g-spot would ruin him if she did it too fast. Connie was so tempted, but she wanted to make this experiment enjoyable if nothing else. Her finger rubbed softly as she stroked, tapping the prostate softly, like she was playing a note on her violin. 

She loved how much Steven was entirely under her control. His breaths were wet and heavy, overcome with emotion. As Connie stroked, Steven’s precum became thicker, more opaque as he was milked. His cockhead oozed and was slickened with his own fluids, round and shiny, a perfect stoutness to his length. He was all Connie’s. She could control him, her own handsome pet, ready for her pressure.

Millimeter by millimeter, Connie pulled her fingers from her husband’s hole, sliding across the walls and back out, clean as a whistle. She wiped the residual liquids on the hairy cheek, patting the fat gently. Steven grunted and tried to force himself to relax again. Dull cracks echoed from his spine as he arched it, shifting back and forth.

While there were quite a few toys to choose from, they all had one thing in common, something Connie had made sure Steven stuck to: they all had to be able to fit in a strap. What Connie hadn’t told Steven was that she had found an adjustable one, for every toy, and that even the ones he had bought for training purposes could fit inside. The package was coming soon. For now, Connie felt herself tense and leaking from all the fun they were having at the moment. She took the fingers that had been inside Steven and pressed them against her vulva, trying not to shudder.

“You’re being such a good Steven,” Connie said, raising her hand to hover over the toys. “You’re going to get a reward. Do you want it?”

“Y-yes, mistress!”

“Turn over onto your back.”

“Yes mistress!”

As Steven flipped over, Connie’s hand swerved over to the bedside table and to the padlocks. Steven could break them as easily as he could and human restraint, but the mind was a wonderful thing. Connie smirked and picked up one of the locks. 

On his back, Steven was blushing heavily, his entire body warm and red and ready. His arms rested on his chest as it rose and fell, right above the cusp of his rounded belly and the glowing gemstone in the middle. Where he had been almost completely smooth in his youth, Steven had aged into quite a hairy man, with dark strands following his arms, curls on his chest in between his raised pecs, all leading down to deep fuzz on his stomach that parted around the gem and trailed down to his sides. From the mess of pubic hair, his cock stuck out as much as it could, stubby and proud and drooling onto his own body.

Connie didn’t have to say a word as she bent Steven’s right leg up, then gestured for his right hand. He raised it so that the cuffs touched, and Connie locked them together. She did the same on the left side, then stepped back to admire her husband. For all his strength, he couldn’t break the bonds that spread him. His hole clenched in between his cheeks, deep in the crevice, knowing what was to come.

The one she wanted to start with was translucent, soft and blue, with a firm vibrating core. Connie picked up the toy and brought it over to Steven, comparing it with his own member. It was almost twice as long, but not nearly as thick. At the base, Connie turned a dial and the toy began to vibrate gently all down the shaft.

Connie pulled on Steven’s cock, masturbating him in one hand as she held the dildo in the other. She smirked, then pulled back Steven’s skin all the way. He glanced down nervously as Connie brought the vibrating tip against his own, and his teeth clenched with the sensation. The reddened, sensitive head shook against the toy. Steven whined as precum oozed out and coated the gelatinous head.

The whining only increased as Connie brought her hand lower on the toy to hold it in place as she slid the foreskin back up, all the way, stretching it to dock Steven and the vibrator together. Steven’s whimpers turned into muted swears. Connie knew well enough that this kind of sensation could only bring Steven to the edge. The head was so sensitive and the stimulus so overpowering that no amount of glans teasing could make him cum. It only drove him to a maddening edge as he bucked against the sensation, held by his wife.

“Connie!”

“Hm?”

“....m-mistress…”

The woman withdrew the vibrator, and let go of her husband as he collapsed panting on the bed. While he relaxed, Connie smiled and reached for the bottle of lubricant. She turned the toy off and popped the lid, dripping it on the shaft before stroking firmly, coating the dildo for entry.

This was exciting in a way she couldn’t put into words, and she wasn’t sure why. Steven was certainly having fun with it. Connie stood and put the blue phallus in front of her groin, as if she was going to thrust into Steven herself. Once things came in, once they were ready, she would be the one to penetrate him. The thought made Connie want to slip the toy inside herself and cum right there. But she could wait. This was for Steven.

The stillness of the toy was like an omen. As it neared Steven’s hole, Connie felt her breath quicken, her heart pump as she held the cock in both hands. The tip rubbed against the outside of Steven’s body, and the man had to take a deep breath. The entrance relaxed only a little as Connie pushed, feeling the resistance. Steven’s nostrils flared as he whined, and Connie thrust her hips with one deep push, and the toy passed the barrier and made a beautiful wet noise as it entered Steven.

“A- _ auh! _ ”

Steven’s gasp of initial pain faded as Connie slid more and more of the vibrator inside. She felt the squeeze, the resistance, and she saw how hard Steven was. Her hand gripped the base of the slickened dildo and she moved with it, pushing her body closer, pushing herself towards her husband. Connie reached up and placed her outstretched palm on the hairy back of Steven’s thigh. It felt like she was inside of him. It was a sense of power, but lustfully so, a sexual power she loved despite not understanding it at all.

Her husband didn’t feel like this when he penetrated her. He couldn’t feel like this. Steven laid on his back as sweat matted his hair, his head turned to the side as he moaned in pleasure, with his wife moving a toy back and forth inside of his ass. Steven loved this feeling when it came from Connie and Connie alone, when his mistress was in control. A stripe of blush crossed his face, burning him up, his body rocking with the pleasure of getting fucked.

“Oh, y-yes, mistress,” he whispered, “yes, fuck me…”

This was the space Connie could only dream of. In the bedroom, in this safe place, Steven could let himself go. Watching him give in to her made Connie’s heart swell. He could never think about hurting her when he was like this. She had started this whole process with a single worry about hurting Steven, but looking at him now, she wasn’t sure why she had even bothered to think. Connie knew what she was doing, and Steven was loving it.

She turned the dial and the toy began to vibrate. Steven bucked on the mattress, arching his back with his head thrown onto the sheets in a deep groan. Connie closed her eyes and pressed herself up to the bed, her clit on the back end of the toy as she shoved her hips forward. The latent vibration was enough. Connie rubbed herself with her right hand and stimulated herself with the end of the vibrator’s roughness, and the quick orgasm caught up to her before she knew it. Her whole pussy tingled with power. She could penetrate herself and rub all she wanted, but this feeling made her small climax all the larger. Riding Steven and stretching herself to orgasm was fairly rare. If she could get a toy and get on top of Steven ever time, she knew she would never want for cumming again. She shuddered as the climax faded, and she was left with a sweaty bear of a man in front of her.

It wasn’t much, but it had been enough. And Connie wanted to satisfy Steven and herself, too. The woman pressed the vibrator as deep inside the man as it could go with the lube that had been applied. Steven groaned deeply, his throat cracked as if the toy was reaching and breaking him up on the inside. Connie raised a leg and held the toy in place with her bent knee.

“You love it when I’m inside you, Steven?” she said.

“Y-yes, mistress…”

“Show me.”

Connie reached down to where she had left the lube. The top popped, and she drizzled the man’s aching penis in the clear fluid. Steven looked down uncertainly, but Connie only smiled back. She took both hands and started to rub the oil into Steven’s cock like a massage, making the man shake with the teasing, until the whole member was shiny with lube. With her fists, Connie brought them down and opened her fingers one little bit at a time, penetrating her hands with Steven’s lubed-up cock.

It took less then a second for Steven to be writing with pleasure, his groans and grunts deep and animalistic. Connie’s tight stroking was enough to tease him, just barely enough to keep him on the edge. His wife brought down one fist at a time, sliding her fingers over the head and down to the base of the cock before doing the same with the other, never giving him the satisfaction of a full stroke. Thick precum mixed with the lubrication as wet, heavy sounds filled the bedroom, the  _ schlk, schlk _ of sticky flesh being toyed with.

When Connie finally brought her hand back up Steven’s shaft, the man cried out and bit his lip as he tried to keep the volume down, as if there were neighbors who could hear his pleasure, as if the sound would somehow hurt his wife. The whimper turned to a hiss as Connie’s knee pushed the toy just that little bit more inside his tight hole.

This was the limit. Connie took her left hand and clenched Steven’s aching balls, pulling at the hefty sack with one hand as he right began to stroke for her life. The clench was enough to drive Steven to panting, his eyes rolling back in his head. The end of his penis was almost purple, swollen to beyond its usual thickness and aching for release. The dark folds of skin underneath rose and fell. Steven grit his teeth and slammed his head against the mattress.

“Mistress!” he gasped, his throat squealing as it tightened up. “M-Mistress, I’m g- _ hh! _ I’m gonna —!”

The coherence turned into a cry, tears streaming down Steven’s face as the orgasm hit. His cock literally shook in Connie’s hands as she watched the thick globule of cum splatter out, spitting over her knuckles. The cumshot lasted for as long as Connie stroked, slowly but surely, edging all she could from the man’s body. Her hands moved up and down and Steven continued to cum, dribbling and leaking all over his sweat-matted crotch. A pool of semen formed in the basin underneath his tummy, in between his shuddering thighs. The explosion had volume, no distance, contained as it was around Steven’s groin.

Connie pulled down once more, and a final spurt dribbled down onto her thumb. Steven’s breaths were hot and heavy like a bull, his hands shaking and his body barely beginning to release its tension. Connie found that she was sweating just as much, breathing almost as heavily, despite only having moved her hands. She smiled with an open mouth.

Steven’s satisfaction was starting to dribble down the roundness of his thighs, hitting the coarse hair follicles like a pachinko machine. Connie wiped her hands on the comforter and stepped back. She turned the vibrator off, then brought it out slowly, easing it out of her husband until the tip finally broke the pink ring and both of them shuddered. It could be cleaned along with their bodies. Another shower was in order.

Wordlessly, Connie brought the key up from the nightstand and unlocked Steven’s cuffs, one at a time. The man lowered himself shakily to the bed, and with his legs down the cum began to drip freely. It didn’t matter. Everything could be cleaned. 

“God…”

Steven rested his hands on his stomach, rubbing the sweat up and down. Connie stood and observed the deep satisfaction on his face, where the tears had dripped through the perspiration and the salt all mingled together. His cock was sliding back into itself, into his body, totally spent from the massive assault on its nerves. She couldn’t blame him. 

“How are you feeling?”

“I-I’m good,” Steven mumbled. “Really good.”

“Good.”

There was no room on the bed to lie next to him with all the penises in the way.  _ Can’t spoon the husband for the dicks. _ A thought that silly meant Connie really was ready to be done. But no, things were never quite done. The woman paused and put the key back down slowly, turning to Steven and tapping her chin.

“Hold still,” Connie said.

Steven’s breaths slowed as he glanced up at her without a word. His eyes were as wide and curious as they had always been, in his most beautiful, childlike moments, wondering when something amazing was going to happen. Connie kept her heart from melting as she reached down and undid the straps from Steven’s wrists, putting them to the side for washing later, before she bent down and did the same to the ankle straps. If they didn’t wipe and disinfect them, they would smell like sweat forever.

“I want to shower with you,” Connie said.

“Eyup!”

He was out of one mindset and into another. There was no more ‘mistress’ on his tongue, but there was another kind of obedience, one where he was willing to please Connie because it pleased him. Of course he wanted to shower with her, as she wanted to shower with him. The suggestion was what rocketed him upright onto woozy legs, as he stood and shook with having been on his back for so long. 

Immediately, Connie steadied him, grabbing his arms, holding him still. The woman was at a loss for words. Steven had to choose this. She hugged the man and turned her head, squishing herself against his torso suddenly. A wave of the unknown crossed her mind.

What was the extent of this? What did Steven want? As he hugged her, comforted her, he said something that Connie couldn’t catch. All she could tell was that the words were meant to give her solid ground. Even as they stood, Connie felt Steven’s legs stop trembling, solid as they could be, and he stroked the back of Connie’s wild hair. She felt his heart slow down as she hugged him. This was right. She had to trust that this was right, just as he had trusted her, just as he had loved her. Connie finally let a smile cross her face. The two stood for a moment more. The shower could wait for them.


	4. His Experiment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven explores his fears in the bathroom.

* * *

When Steven looked in the mirror, he lifted a finger and pulled on his eyelid, leaning in towards the glass. It was the same deep brown as ever, just like his father’s eyes were. Steven took a deep breath and raised himself upright again.

He had put the toilet seat lid back down. The bathroom had been the most luxurious part of the house they had renovated when they moved in. One of Steven’s wishes was for a romantic bathtub, like they had when they did part of their honeymoon tour, and it sat in the corner of the bathroom with its jacuzzi jets dormant. The standing shower and its frosted glass remained dormant for the moment.

On the edge of the tub, the dildo wobbled menacingly. Steven glanced over with a smirk. It was practically photorealistic, a carbon copy of a pornstar. Steven and Connie had watched pornography together once before deciding that it wasn’t for them. All the fakeness couldn’t compare to the warmth of each other’s touch. The shaved bodies, the high-pitched whining, the weird angles, the massive plasticine breasts, the straight and cut penis — it just didn’t mesh with the real world. 

The fake cocks, however, were fun. They were tools. In the real world, Steven wasn’t sure how much he could go out and actually have sex with someone fucking him who wasn’t Connie. Feeling something slip inside him from her hand was enough even now to send a shiver up his spine.

It was all through her hand. Letting Connie take control was enough to lift a weight from his mind that he hadn’t realized was there. Or had he? Steven gripped the edge of the sink and blew out a breath. There had been nights, when they were younger, where Steven had apologized for not being in the mood, and then turning to snuggle his wife and hold her close, trying to refrain from crying. Only recently had they gone and opened up about this in therapy. Why were things coming back now? Steven raised his arms around himself and forced his lungs to pace their intake.

When he had lost control and turned into a monster, there had been no sexual feelings there. It was all about deceit, self-worth, his own identity, other buzzwords that could be read in a report about his mental health. The words didn’t help when he had been lost; only when he was in control did that cocktail of nonsense straighten out into something helpful. Talking with their therapist was helpful. Being with Connie was, mostly, helpful.

Steven glanced over at the dildo again. Playing with himself was helpful. Because he spent so much time working on who he was as an adult, Steven had to learn how to learn again, and teaching himself new skills wasn’t always easy. Learning about sex was a different story. Because he was bound to Connie, all his thoughts went through her, with all his emotions tied up in her image. And they learned together as well. Cleanliness, speed, size and aftercare were mere parts of the whole, and there was so much more to take into consideration. 

The most important lesson was how to give up control. There, there was something that he couldn’t have learned as a teenager. Steven felt his heart skip a beat, just for a second, and he thumped his chest with his fist like he would a faulty television set. Control, it was all about control. Steven had to give up control. When they had played together, it felt just like that, just like play. When Connie made him call her his mistress, when she talked dirty to him, there was another awakening and Steven had to channel that.

What was the feeling of giving up control?

Steven looked in the mirror again and was momentarily surprised by how unhappy he looked when he was concentrating. His eyes had that watery, guilty quality that felt embarrassingly childlike. He hated how he looked sometimes, whenever he made people feel sorry for him. Even after all that had happened, giving that up was difficult, too difficult. Why? Steven paced backwards in the bathroom, feeling the tiles underneath his bare feet. In the winter, they would be heated. In the spring, their coolness usually helped him calm down.

“What the hell, Steven,” he said, his voice low and hoarse. “What’s wrong. What’s wrong…”

He stopped and looked at himself again, standing back away from the mirror. Being naked at home was a privilege he appreciated enough to focus on. When he was younger, he hadn’t cared about his body until a certain point, where he was taught to be embarrassed, when he developed a sense of shame. At this point in his life, he couldn’t care less. As long as nobody was being hurt and it was appropriate, he could be naked all the time. Steven smiled at the memory of his conversation with Connie, jokingly trying to convince her to go up north and ride naked with him in one of Oregon’s nudist events. It had been a while since he had been on a bike ride. Maybe it was time now that the weather was heating up.

What was wrong? Steven put his arms out to the sides and let them fall, smacking against his thighs, flopping skin to skin. He looked human again. He was a broad, hairy man with a barrel chest and a sturdy gut. Manliness became him. Connie loved him for it. Steven turned around on his heels, lifting a hand to rub his chin. There was his butt, and he had to admit, it had grown into something he was proud of, fuzzy as it was.

He remembered when his skin had been scales. The bulges in his back had turned into spines. His white teeth had grown sharp and hardened on the outside into a razor maw. The hand that rested on his chin had been tipped with diamond-sharp claws. A tail had weighed down the back of his legs.

Steven sat down heavily on the tiles. This was wrong, and he opened his mouth to tell himself that, but only heavy breathing came out. He didn’t want to remember this. To ignore it, though, was to ignore reality, to take the worst parts of his memory and compartmentalize it into a state of nothingness, a lie in itself. There could be no more lies. But their therapist couldn’t possibly understand what had happened, no matter how much they explained it. No human professional could understand. Greg could, Connie could, the Gems could — but only on the outside. There was a monster somewhere inside him yet.

That wasn’t true. That couldn’t be true. Steven felt his brow furrow in frustration. If he were to speak to any therapist about this, they could only talk to him in terms of the metaphorical. Connie would know how literal it was, how much there was something real that remained inside Steven. When he had turned into that monster, he had changed reality. How horrible, how terrifying, how honest.

The man pushed himself to his feet and turned back to the mirror. He stared at himself intensely, narrowing his eyes and scrunching up his mouth in a glower. If he tried, if he really tried, Steven knew he could be intimidating. He was certainly tall enough to be imposing. He had a strong jaw, broad shoulders, bigness all around. But he could be more. Steven knew he could scare himself. He took one deep breath.

The black circles of his pupils wobbled. They didn’t own him. Steven gripped the edge of the sink, just enough to steady himself, not so much that the material cracked. This was just the beginning. Meeting his own gaze, Steven grit his teeth. It couldn’t be voluntary, this change. He had to let it happen from within. He could be in control of this. The man closed his eyes and let the feelings come back through him. He remembered the moment he had curled up on the floor and let his back explode. Right now, he wasn’t a monster. He couldn’t hurt Connie. He would never, ever. If those feelings wanted to emerge they were going to have to fight him. When Steven opened his eyes again, the world was blurry, but he knew exactly what he was seeing.

His eyes looked terrifying, as he knew they would. The transition from white to black had been instantaneous and reactionary. Steven blinked at himself, amazed at the glowing inside of the dark circles. This was the beginning. The urge to finish filled him. Finish what? He sucked down a breath and hunched his back as instinct began to come up through his veins. When he had turned all those years ago, he had lost control. This was that same involuntary measure, the same horrendous sensation.

The teeth came before he had a chance to think. The man gasped in pain as his jaw shuddered, the bones reforming and the sharp fangs emerging from his mouth. His skin made way for the protrusions, but the pain was real all the same, dulled to a throbbing. He felt like a wolf, the way he had to snap and snarl in the mirror. The feeling was good; it meant he could actually know what was happening.

And the one thing that Steven knew was that this whole process was incredibly painful, more than he could have ever known. Waking up in a blanket had been sore, but this was beyond soreness. His whole body felt like there was magma flowing through his veins. Pinpricks of heat coursed behind his eyeballs and threatened to blow them out of his skull. What had once been the dull sensation of nerve pain had turned into a begging expulsion of his body from itself. It was too much. 

Steven staggered backwards, trying to keep himself upright. On the tile, his toes began to extend and the nails glowed and reformed into claws. His hips, of all places, began to swell up as his legs demanded to be bent backwards into the monstrous digitigrade form they had been in. The man collapsed to the floor, and the tiles cracked underneath the weight of his fall.

He knew it was too much when his temples started to swell. Steven felt the protrusions growing like light out of his skin, awkward and crystalline, until the horns weighed upon his head like a crown. The man opened his mouth to gasp in pain, feeling his body stretch and contort. He slammed his fists into the ground and grunted, arching his back in some attempt to get his bones under control. If he couldn’t control this, there was no hope. He had to make himself listen and obey. He had to be able to turn on his own volition.

Connie could have made him obey. If she was here, she could have grabbed him by the back of the neck and forced him to look up at her. Steven pressed his palms against the bathroom floor and shoved himself to his feet in a single mighty push. He stomped to stagger himself back to balance, the walls shaking. He was taller than he had been. He was growing. Connie could have stared up with the same energy that she stared down, and he would have felt just as small. She could bring him to his knees. The man stared at his swollen hands, almost paws, and their clawed ends. 

His eyes raised until he saw the place on the sink where he had left his wedding ring before cleaning up. Above it, in the mirror, Steven caught his reflection again. There were pink patches of scales spread over his chest and stomach. His horns had exploded out of his skin, and he could see them in his peripheral vision even now. Off-white crystal spikes, just like his horns, had emerged on his shoulders. Shakily, the man turned. There was no tail yet, but his hips and ass looked swollen from the adjustment his legs wanted to make. It wasn’t even sexy at this point. Nothing felt good.

Could it, though? Steven turned his head down and lifted his belly to touch himself. The fingers curled around his cock and tugged it forward. The immediacy of sensation was enough to make Steven feel his legs buckling. For all their monstrous strength, there was something electric about his touch, a current that ran down his nerves. The man let go with a trembling hand.

Well, something felt good. All the nerves rushing around his body meant that the sensations of self-love were accentuated, perhaps. Not that Steven’s mind could wrap itself around such a coherent thought, but the fact was that his body was sensitive. He imagined Connie’s hands touching him all over, and his mouth opened in a gasping growl. It was difficult to speak with all these sharp teeth. He couldn’t make any noise beyond a guttural growl.

“Grr _ rngh _ …”

He turned his head to the dildo on the edge of the tub. Steven stomped over and wrenched the toy from its base, whipping his head around for the bottle of lube. It was on the sink, and the man nearly punched the porcelain grabbing it. He tore the top of the bottle off in his teeth and doused the cock like he was applying relish to a hot dog.

“C-Connie…  _ Connie _ …” he rasped.

Steven fell to the ground. The thick head of the toy rubbed against his hole and set it afire as Steven maneuvered it back. On his knees, the man was reaching between his legs to adjust the cock before he sat back. It popped in quickly, with force, opening up the ring with its slickness and making Steven bark with the pressure. This one was the thickest they had, the largest in their collection, and it was enough to make Steven wonder if he could take it. 

The thought only crossed his mind for a moment. The pain of penetration and the miasma of his corruption were enough to make him feel as if he was lost in his own head, unable to come out. Steven squeezed his eyes shut, kneeling on the broken tile. He had to think of Connie before things got back to normal. He had to control this, or else there was no hope for him. Steven knew he was afraid, and he hated it, he hated that feeling. There were things you just couldn’t do in therapy.

When his mouth opened, the sticky saliva dangled from his fangs, a spiderweb of pain and pleasure as he lowered himself onto the silicone. There, a single tear, something coming down his cheek — he recognized the sensation. Connie had been there when he cried, and she had been there when she had entered him as well. It was her hand behind the penetration. It was her control. Steven squeezed his eyes shut.

He began to rock up and down with grit teeth. The man shoved the toy as deep as he could, groaning without holding back as he felt it stretch his insides. No amount of lube could prevent the friction of tightness, and Steven loved it, learning how to love it. He was taken by the sensation and by his own hands. This was control. This had to be control. He focused his thoughts on his wife. What would she say if she saw him like this.

Words, the words were so hard to speak. Steven let go and fell onto his hands. He moved so he was as he had been on the soft bed, leaning down with his neck bent and his horns scraping the tile, rear end raised up in the air. His cheek pressed against the cold tile as he reached back with his right hand and adjusted the toy. The roar echoed through the bathroom as he shoved it in shakily as far as his body would allow.

The angle exacerbated the places on his body where he felt the scales chafe, the skin shifting underneath his grip. It was a horrible animal feeling. His body was not his own. But he had to revel in it, lose himself. Steven pressed his face to the floor and rubbed it into the coldness of the stones, groaning louder and louder as he fucked himself.

What was he trying to do? What was he trying to prove? Steven got into a rhythm with the toy, grunting and shoving awkwardly in a steady beat, his wrist slapping against his ass in nervous pinpricks. It was like exercise, discipline. That was the rub, the reason. The man spread his legs apart and forced the cock deep into him until his ring ached. Connie should be the one doing this. It was her safety he had feared for, her body he was worried about. That shouldn’t mean he should forgive his own, though. He had no idea what Connie would say if she saw him like this. He couldn’t keep it a secret. Steven opened his blurry eyes. He had to tell her.

It would be like this. He would submit to her as a monster. Steven pushed the dildo all the way to the balls at the base, feeling the head work through his body. Shakily, his right hand came between his legs, and he felt his tender, swollen member. Just like the rest of him, his own penis was swollen even thicker than usual, lengthier, growing to match his monstrous size. Steven looked forward to where the edge of the tub was and back to where his feet were on the tile. He was definitely taller than he had been ten minutes before. Everything was bigger.

Closing his eyes again, Steven began to masturbate on his knees with the toy inside. The head of his cock was so swollen that his skin couldn’t glide past the tip. His grunts turned into whines as he imagined Connie touching him.

Her hands would be so firm. With her hips pressing against Steven’s body, Connie would grip with both left and right, stroking him, lubed up and dripping. She would comfort him with a shush and a smile, praising him. On his back, on his stomach, wherever she wanted him, Steven would be still and take it. He imagined his legs stretched and pink, his arms swollen and clawed, a tail unfurled.

The more monstrous he became in his head, the more he focused on Connie. On the bathroom floor, Steven panted and stroked harder, his massive fingers clutching the swollen shaft. The toy felt just as large as it had before, even more impactful with his body on fire. His aching hole flared in and out with the gentle pressure from his left hand. The pleasure of the right moved in erratic rhythm.

As the toy edged his prostate, Steven increased the strength of his grip. He could build up an immunity, but no, it would never be that strong. He had to control himself, and Connie had to control him. But she always would, wouldn’t she. In the bedroom, in their marriage, Steven would do anything to please her. He would make tea and food and serve her in bed. He would bury his face between her breast and legs and suck the beauty from her skin. He would kneel at her feet and worship the tautness of her ankles as she stood proud. Connie was his savior. She was his equal in love, and there was no other like her, no other beauty on the planet. 

_ Don’t be afraid, _ her voice sang in Steven’s head.  _ You’re my Steven. You’re my good boy. _

The love was overwhelming. Steven never imagined he could feel like this. All the parts of him that had turned monstrous were controllable. All the problems could be solved if he let it happen. In his head, in his imagination, Steven felt the pleasure and the pressure. It was his fantasy to be taken like this. The realization of pleasure built up inside, as it had been building up for minutes, if not years.

His orgasm came strong, searing like lightning inside a green birch, lacing pleasure and heat through the nerves of his genitals. Steven’s mouth opened and a roar came out, loud enough to shake the bathroom walls. The reddened cock twitched and his ass clamped on the toy. All the glands inside flexed, a machine for churning out his cumshot. The head of his cock throbbed and semen fell audibly to the floor, splattering down between his legs. He could feel it pulsing out of him, pushed by the dildo from his body and onto the cracked tile. Aching pressure radiated through his thighs, released like an arrow, like a cannon. Steven’s throat thrummed with his latent growls as he dribbled onto the floor, neck twisted around.

This was the bitch position, the animal posture, where he deserved to be when he was like this. The spikes on his back and shoulders pulsed with him in a rhythm, little nodes of corruption, of wildness. Steven let his body shake from the aftermath. He held the toy inside him still, afraid to let it out, afraid of what his nerves would do in the glow. He remained with his head on the ground. The horns scraped whenever he moved his face.

“Ghhod, Connie…”

When Steven moved his body, he could feel everything still. He knew his eyes were still black. How did he go back from this? Connie had been there to help. He had been in the ocean that time, his body the size of a whale, his pain blocking out his brain. But he blinked, and Steven couldn’t help but smile; he had done something right. Throughout this process, he had remained conscious. It was Connie that had helped. The thought of his wife to guide him was what kept him afloat. His brain swam, but his mind had held fast despite the contortions of his body.

Steven released himself and crossed his arms underneath his chin like a cushion. The man felt his rasping breaths in and out, felt them flow through his lungs. He nestled against his skin, feeling the pink rash against his cheek. Steven’s back ached from holding this position through his climax. Slowly, he started to close his eyes. One piece at a time.

With his tongue, he started to roll over his teeth, commanding them to flatten. He wanted to kiss his wife. The sharpness receded. Millimeter by millimeter, he felt his molars and cuspids returning, the enamel shifting in his jaw. It ached to reset the bones. But his body knew what it meant to be Steven again. The process took its time. Steven kept his eyes and mouth closed as he felt himself returning to human. The toy inside of him started to feel bigger as his body started to shrink back down. The tightness was painful, and the pain was, as he expected, human. In the aftermath of his orgasm, his penis began to shrink back down to its stocky and humble origins, still trailing cum to the puddle on the bathroom floor. After an unknown period, the horns began to pulse, and one by one, Steven felt the nubs and spikes of his body return to the soft skin, the beauty of the normal.

The pressure eventually made the dildo slide out, and Steven winced as it plopped out of him and tumbled to the tile in a wet, floppy smack. Standing up was an ordeal. Broken tiles crunched underneath his feet. Steven blinked and turned to the mirror. Everything was still blurry and dizzying. He continued to blink it away until objects came into focus, and he could see the toothbrushes, the combs, the wedding ring, himself.

Steven glanced down to the floor. It looked like someone had dumped a cup of frosting onto the cracks to fix it. There was practically a crater from where he had fallen down. He wondered for a brief moment if his semen could fix broken objects like his spit could, but the liquid merely sat there in a gelatinous puddle, obscene and pearly, obstinately doing nothing to fix his bathroom. Well, you couldn’t win them all.

He made eye contact. The brown was back. Transitioning to and fro was possible. Steven looked at his naked human body again, running a hand down his side, down the stretch marks and hair, where there had at one point been pink scales and inhuman deformities. The monster was inside of him, but Steven glared at himself defiantly. He leaned on the sink again, and a smile came to his lips.

“You feel that? You see that? I own you. I  _ am _ you.”

If Steven knew exactly who he was talking to, his brain refused to acknowledge it. He grinned and panted and blew cold air out of his lungs. Steven could smell the sweat and cum. Today was a day to clean the bathroom, before Connie got home. Maybe, Steven thought as he straightened up, maybe he would find the words to tell her what had happened.


	5. Her Embrace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven and Connie have a talk by the beach.

* * *

Spring brought tumult to the ocean. Connie noticed that the waves were choppier, as if agitated from the coldness of winter, as if the water was eager to thaw into warmth again. The waters around here were only really warm in the summer, certainly warmer than they ever were on the eastern seaboard, but the ocean had always been a little too cold for her. Steven had no reservations about jumping into any body of water. He could heat up the entire pacific if he wanted to.

Steven squeezed his arm around his wife’s shoulder. Connie felt the rub, and leaned into the man, sliding over on the bench. Their schedule had allowed for an earlier appointment, and Steven had offered to take her to the sunset. She couldn’t say no to that.

The sun obliged with a deep purple showing, a beautiful warmth in the upper atmosphere as the remnants of rain faded into the horizon. The weather had been strangely overcast on and off, and it made for wonderful light patterns when the sun finally came through. In the afternoons, the beams formed solid patterns through the trees as Connie drove along the highway back from work. Here in the evening, a strip of orange lit up the water from where the sun sunk into it, radiating the colors of a dying world into the clouds. The atmosphere was hazy and uneven, beautiful clouds uncertain of where to go and what to do with themselves.

“You opened up a lot today,” Connie said. 

“It felt good. It felt right, y’know?”

“It feels special. But in a weird way.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Steven replied slowly. “Like, how you saw me explode, and you saw how — weird I was before, and after, and geez, how do you explain that to any other human being? It’s always gonna be a little unusual.”

“That’s it! Like how my mom was so worried about your body after. It’s so…”

“Human?”

“Yeah.”

Priyanka Maheswaran had insisted on check-ups with Steven following the photographs she saw of the incident, courtesy of many a curious Beach City resident. In the weeks that came after Steven had turned, Connie, Greg and the Gems had fielded more than a few incoming messages wondering what had happened, if there was anything to be worried about. No details were ever released. If anyone knew that that had been Steven, the ensuing questions would have been horrendous. Priyanka saw Steven in private, as if he was a normal patient with normal confidentiality, and it was her who set Steven up with his first therapist.

Getting Steven into the meeting hadn’t been easy, as Connie recalled. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go, but the fears were monumental. Steven had been shivering, sweating, crying up a storm through the whole ordeal. Every moment in the waiting room had been hellish. Lion’s presence was the greatest asset. He was surprisingly calm with Steven, as if he had been waiting his whole eternal life for this. Priyanka had found the most patient therapist she could, someone who would be understanding of Steven’s reservations and limitations, and one who was okay with service animals. Each meeting, Connie waited and studied and read in the room until the sniffling boy exited and came back for a hug. 

After occasionally visiting Connie at college, Lion had stuck around Steven, but he had let the boy be independent on his road trip out of Beach City, and had lounged around Little Homeworld for a while. He was probably either there or the beach house, or wandering somewhere out in the galaxy, looking for places to sleep and little creatures to chase. Like Lars, Connie wondered where he was and how old he would get. Sometimes, she wondered the same about her husband.

But he was growing and aging along with her, and that was one fear allayed for the time being. The future was the future, and they could work on that when they got there. They were working on it now, talking about the past and the impact there. Steven had talked much more about his fear and about sex than usual. Connie was slightly embarrassed to discuss their private life, but it was important to Steven, and he was surprisingly reserved about the details that Connie thought he might divulge. Instead, he talked about sex in the abstract, almost philosophically. There was talk of forces and powers, a struggle inside, the struggle between intimacy and eroticism, and more as Steven waxed poetic. 

Moreover, he had talked about the feelings that were coming up. Connie could see that, like usual, it pained him to speak about the monstrous times. They had had to explain previously the literal nature of this statement, and luckily, after a call with Steven’s teenage therapist, things had been ironed out. The nature of Gems and their isolation from humans was still just starting to ease into socialization. Neither human nor alien had seen anything like Steven’s transformation before, and nobody but Steven had been inside. White Diamond’s power hadn’t come close to the lived experience.

These days, it seemed like neither one of them had anything to be angry about. Connie and Steven didn’t argue. There were plenty of niggles to disagree about, but nothing that sparked up the anger that had led Steven down the path the first time. There was fear, uncertainty for sure, but no madness. The feelings that had turned Steven pink as an adult had come from his brain acting on its own, assigning physical manifestations where there was no mental danger, and that was the nature of the chemistry. They were still working through that as a couple. Being together helped immensely.

Dates like this also helped. They called them micro-dates, or at least Connie did: little moments of time that they could spend for themselves, time apart from the world, slices from the romance movie that was their life. It was a life together. Connie shuddered as a sense of relief flooded her body. She was relieved that she had the best husband on Earth. She was thankful that her childhood mysteries had come true, that she was living a magical human lifestyle unlike anyone else she knew.

She was Steven’s keeper. As his hand rubbed her shoulder idly, Connie’s right hand rested on the man’s thigh. Her fingers squeezed the muscle softly, and she felt the softness of his body below her. As she had grown older, as thoughts became more mature and her interactions with Steven became more intimate, she had realized how much of her childhood had influenced her sexual drive. Power and prowess were vital. Magic turned her on. Danger got her heart racing when she least expected it. Now, with Steven and his submission, the thrill she got out of making the man obey her was indescribable.

“Hey, honey.”

When she looked up, Connie could see there was something else on Steven’d mind. She patted his leg in encouragement. The man sighed, looking down at the sand.

“It’s… The reason, um, it’s been coming up a lot… Connie, I did something the other day,” Steven mumbled. “I dunno if it was good or bad but I need to tell you.”

His voice was thick with hesitation. Was this a confession? There had been no need for such dramatic measures as long as they had been together. There were only the secrets of the bodies and the bedroom, and those had been taken care of the first time they had cuddled in the nude. After their recent escapades, Connie wasn’t sure there was much left to hide.

“Shoot.”

Steven held out a hand and flexed it. There was worry in the motion as his other and rubbed Connie’s shoulder some more. His clean-cut fingernails curved and reflected the light.

“I tried to turn myself. I was in the bathroom, and...it worked. A little.”

“What, wait, what do you mean turn yourself?”

“Back into — that.”

It could have been the chill of the evening and the dying light, but Connie felt something cold run down her spine. She sat up and stared at Steven, who glanced away like a guilty puppy.

“You did that  _ in _ the  _ house _ ?” she said. “Without me?”

The man didn’t say anything. Connie turned her body to face Steven and tried to track her emotions as she opened her mouth. Her husband looked more pensive than ashamed, more concerned than embarrassed. Connie swallowed.

“What happened?”

“I was...naked, and I grew the horns, and the claws, and my eyes went black and… I didn’t grow much but I grew a little. And, um, I...played with m’self.”

Connie paused. She turned back to the sunset, scooting up next to Steven. She could sense that he was blushing even through his concern. Connie wasn’t sure what to think. To imagine, though, that Steven was corrupting himself and turning himself back into a monster, without anyone around to help him — the worry in Connie’s heart skyrocketed. If this had been within the recent few days, Connie couldn’t pin when it might have happened; through all of them, Steven was in a consistent good mood, his usual self ever since they started going to therapy and doing the power play.

The hiccups of Steven’s anxiety stemmed from his trauma, and bringing that trauma to light was important, but in this sense, Connie was so uncertain. She imagined Steven suffering. The woman huffed and reached up to grab her husband’s hand, tugging him even closer around her.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” she asked. “I could have helped you if anything had gone wrong. Steven, so much could have gone wrong!”

“I know. I’m sorry, it was stupid. But I need to learn how to control this by myself. I can’t — Connie, I can’t expect you to take care of my brain. I’m the one who’s gotta live with it. For your sake, I want to make myself stronger.”

“Well I’m here to help with that! I want to be there! We are together because I want to be there for you as much as you want to be there for me! You know I love you, Steven, every part of you, the parts that are whole and the parts that need healing. This is what I signed up for!”

“...I know,” Steven sighed. “It’s not that I don’t want your help. I just… I want to train myself to be better. To exercise the parts of my head that need flexing. I want to live and love and go to therapy with you and talk about all our problems. I want that, too! But I also want to control myself for your sake. We’re not...Stevonnie. We’re Steven and Connie. And I want to be the best Steven I can for you.”

They were quiet for a moment. Connie had to appreciate the sentiment. As much as the methodology terrified her, Steven was doing his best to get better. There were things like eating and exercise that they might be able to do together, but in the end only one body could benefit. Therapy was done together and Connie just realized now that they could only get separate goodness from it. He was right. Stevonnie was a rare experience, someone they had seen less of as they got older and got to be with each other more. They were the best for missions and battling and moments where they had to fight; in the house, Steven and Connie just wanted to be with each other.

The best Steven was a Steven who was telling her the truth and making good on his promises. Connie knew she couldn’t be mad at him for that. She hadn’t really been mad at all, the more she thought about it; scared, certainly, worried immensely, but not mad. All her anger was righteous and all her fury was passion, making their marriage a better place to live and love together. Even though Steven was right about them being different, Connie would never let that take them apart.

The woman stood up and extended a hand. Steven got to his feet immediately. Darkness was beginning to fall over the coast. A streetlight flickered on above their car, blinking to white life. Other vehicles drove by in the background, leaving red and white trails behind them as they passed. The sand looked black and the ocean was dotted with white reflections from the shore. With their matching sweatshirts, Steven and Connie looked like high school sweethearts, the single car at the beach with nobody else around. Steven tapped his flip-flops on the concrete underneath them as a breeze blew up his shorts.

“Let’s go.”

Steven took Connie’s hand and let her lead him. She pulled him gently away from the bench and down to the wooden stairs leading to the beach. There were no lifeguards and nobody to stop them from going down and camping out if they wanted to. There were no rules but their own. The clouds covered the remnants of the sun. Night had come quickly. Steven and Connie walked hand-in-hand down the creaking, salt-encrusted stairs.

Waves beat against the shore like a bass drum. The light of the streetlamp could only reach so far before their shadows matched the sand. Connie could feel Steven’s hand shake a bit in the evening air. Even come summer, the sun would only do so much. Steven’s natural warmth was good for cuddling and walking, but the man didn’t feel it like Connie did.

They came near the shore, at the cusp of dry sand. Connie turned and faced Steven, reaching out. Obediently, Steven put his hand in hers, and they faced each other like they were about to dance, like they had done as children. Intimacy and uncertainty filled the air. Connie felt like she was the only one feeling this, like Steven’s questioning was somehow different, as if his fear was a different flavor. What a ridiculous feeling. What was she so afraid of? 

Connie wasn’t afraid of secrets. There would always be some sort of secret. Even when they were Stevonnie and they separated, there were parts of the brain that remained closed off, parts of the heart that remained guarded. It was the reason why Stevonnie hadn’t fully understood Rose Quartz’s looming face, or Jasper’s struggle to reach them. Inside Steven’s head were a thousand machinations that he didn’t know were happening. Synapses and neurons were firing off in errant strands. Memories were being made, feelings were being hurt and repaired, thoughts were created and pushed out of his mouth. The actions that came with them couldn’t afford to be secret. Connie was afraid of something like this, of the day where Steven would do something and he wouldn’t have the strength to tell her. She could only be so strong for him.

He had to open up. This was the Steven she had fallen in love with, after all. Connie gently released Steven’s hands and took one step back, holding her own hands up as if she was training a dog to sit and stay. Almost on cue, Steven tilted his head, watching his wife step back.

“Alright,” Connie said. “Do it.”

“Do...what?”

“Transform. Change. Right here, for me.”

Steven blanched. Of course he would be afraid, and Connie recognized that. It was just part of Steven’s training. The man looked back to the car, took a step backwards on the sand and sunk into the softness, then laughed nervously, putting both hands behind his head. He looked back at Connie as his breath started to quicken.

“C-Connie, I can’t, what if someone comes down and sees us? What if something goes wrong?”

“I’m here in case something goes wrong. And nobody’s going to see you but me.”

“I — I’m scared. Okay? I’m a little freaked out.”

“I know, Steven. That’s why I’m right here,” Connie said, trying to keep her voice level. “If you feel you can’t control yourself, or if something’s going wrong, I’m going to be here to help you back, just like before.”

A hint of pink was flaring up underneath Steven’s cheeks, but the man took a deep breath as he listened, receding into his paleness. Steven tugged awkwardly on his sweatshirt, shifting from foot to foot.

“I think if I do that I’m gonna tear my clothes,” he mumbled.

“Take them off. That’s an order.”

It was enough to get Steven’s attention, that was for sure. He began undressing immediately. First came the sweatshirt, which he pulled off and folded neatly, setting it into the sand. Shivering from the cold, he pulled his t-shirt off as Connie watched, arms folded over her chest. The flip-flops were kicked off next to the overwear. In just his jean shorts, Steven took one more nervous glance towards the boardwalk before unbuttoning and unzipping his fly. Today’s underwear of choice was a set of grayish boxer-briefs with dinosaur skeletons covering them. The man took one more breath before whipping them down to his ankles and stepping barefoot onto the sand. He deposited his clothing as neatly as he could until he was stark naked on the beach. 

Steven rubbed his arms as a gentle chill from the ocean rolled up. Connie had half-expected Steven to put it off until they were at home, or to commit to the torn clothing, but an order was an order, it seemed, and the man was as naked as the day he was born, gemstone shining from the light just like the waves next to them. His groin was covered in shadow, a modicum of modesty in this striptease.

“If this wasn’t totally illegal and terrifying, it would be kinda hot,” Steven chuckled.

“Steven…”

The man heaved another sigh as he looked at Connie, straightening up. She was serious about this, and even though it would take some time, she had to get Steven back on track. The man’s chest rose and fell as he looked at his wife, who could only imagine what was going through his head. It was that feeling of not wanting to hurt her that came first and foremost, she knew. That’s where all these fears had come from in the first place.

Control came to Connie’s poise. She matched his straightening with her own, legs wide on the sand in a powerful stance, the grains separating under her sneakers. The Universe-Maheswaran couple locked eyes. Steven closed his first. His nostrils flared. When he had transformed the first time, it had been an explosive incarnation, a burst of energy unlike anything Connie had ever seen. Here on the beach, the action was still under control, and Connie watched as the man let his arms fall to his sides.

He opened them, and Connie did everything in her power not to gasp at the return to blackness. The eyes were pitch-black, with only the glowing pink diamond in the middle to light up the socket. It was a terrifying sight upon first glance, but Connie knew she couldn’t show any fear. Showing fear, feeling fear, meant that Steven had been right about his body and mind, that he was out of his own control. She couldn’t let that happen. Connie clenched every muscle in her face as she watched the transformation, transfixed by the slow changes.

The first things that she noticed were the horns. Light formed around Steven’s temples as the structures grew out, massive and pink, forming into spikes. All across his shoulders and presumably down his back, more spikes emerged, sending a pink light onto the sand behind him. The man’s whole body began to grow, bones creaking as Steven expanded and his feet pressed into the sand. His toes widened like an ungulate, like a wolf’s paws, and his hands began to expand as well. Connie watched the fingernails shift down in little clouds of light, becoming clawlike at the end of each digit. His hips ground painfully, spreading outwards to accommodate for the newfound power in his thighs and the strengthened bones. Inside of Steven’s mouth, Connie saw the jaw rumbling like rubber, and when he opened himself to growl, she saw the carnivorous canines, the remnants of a predator.

Pink splotches began to form down his arms and back like rashes, scaly skin like a king cobra, covering patches that had once had curly hair growing out of them. The hairs were still dark as they grew through the scales, but the skin was so thick that they were barely visible. There was no tail that Connie could see, not yet. Steven stood a foot taller than before, towering over Connie with his broad torso, and he blinked down at the woman. 

She studied him. Her heart was pounding, but the transformation had worked, and Steven was still here. The man was standing before here as half of a monster, not fully what he had been, not yet what he could be. Between his legs, even though the coldness was encompassing him, Connie saw his swollen and dangling organs, encircled in a patchwork of hair and scales. Everything was bigger, animalistic. Everything about Steven’s body had changed for her.

His soul, however, remained intact. Connie had to believe this. She walked forwards and placed her hands on Steven’s hips, having to raise her arms to feel the warmth. He didn’t move, swaying in the sea air and growling down with every breath. Connie had to wonder if it was painful, what he was going through, if there was something in the way he transformed now that made his body shift. It had been painful before, no question, although Steven never mentioned just what the pain had felt like; there was a chance he couldn’t remember, for good reason. When she touched him and squeezed the skin, a noise came out of Steven’s mouth that was half-human and half-animal.

“M...miss…”

Connie looked up as Steven turned his head angrily to the ocean and wriggled his jaw back and forth. There were muscle aches to be had, changes in the way that his mouth worked, changes in the way that he spoke. When he turned back, he was almost grinning, and the skin was pulled back so far in the different parts of his face that he looked like a walking beautiful nightmare.

“Is this...what you wanted?”

Skin stretching meant marks, possibly permanent ones. In the dim light, Connie could see the places on Steven’s stomach and thighs where the striations were spiderwebbed underneath his hair and around the scales. She ran her hands up the man’s belly, grazing him with her fingernails. He stiffened underneath her when she moved her right hand over the top of his gemstone, pressing the flat of her palm against the smoothness. Steven was warm underneath her, like there was a sun inside of his abdomen.

Why did she want this so badly? It was beyond control. She was tired of control. Control only mattered when you weren’t paying attention. They were in control when they lived their lives outside of realization, when they didn’t care about the things that were happening around them. But that couldn’t be the case for Steven. He was always so aware, always so worried. Connie wished she could get inside of his head and straighten out all the mismatched lines, get the thoughts in order, streamline those worries until Steven didn’t have to worry any more. It was impossible. The most she could do was be there for him.

Right now, that meant hugging him. Connie stepped forward and leaned against the man’s body, felt the heft and the hair and the scales as she wrapped her arms around him. The little spikes on his back grazed her skin and caught her sweatshirt. His heart and lungs swelled underneath her ears. The nudity against her was feral. Connie closed her eyes and breathed in the familiarity of Steven’s skin.

She felt the heft of his arms around her, pulling her close. He was holding back, she could tell, as if he could crush her bones. The strength within Steven could level cities, raze mountains, decimate forests and ecosystems. He chose to make things grow. Connie took a deep breath as she rubbed the side of her head against Steven’s body. She looked up his chest, up into his face as Steven stared down at her. Perfect tears dribbled down the side of his face.

“You’re everything I want,” Connie murmured. “Kiss me.”

With a grunt, Steven lowered himself to his knees. Connie fell against his body, into the grasp of his muscles and his arms. In the crouch, Connie could practically sit on Steven’s lap as she looked down at him. Her hands came to his shoulders, careful not to impale herself. She couldn’t help her eyes almost rolling in her head as her face came down, mouth open and waiting. 

Steven’s kiss back was everything she could have asked for. His mouth was larger, his lips trembling against hers. They fit into each other like puzzle pieces, sucking on the skin, on their lover’s body. Connie tasted Steven like she never had before. The tears that dripped down his face got trapped in the corners of his mouth, sliding into her own, and there was that perfect salt that Connie swallowed. She tasted his spit, his skin, the feeling of the air against their seal of lips. She could feel the muscles in his face relax, second by second. Her tongue pressed his mouth open, and she reached inside to feel the new width, the points of his own teeth, the shape of enamel he had created through will alone. 

He was her monster. Connie felt his tongue connect with the kiss. Naked on the beach like a wild creature, Steven, her husband, held onto her in silent thanks. There was so much more she wanted to do. In time, at home, with him — the future was tamed.


	6. His Submission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven submits to his wife.

* * *

He could wear anything inside the house. Steven did his best to have a routine, wearing his shirts and shorts and changing clothes every day. Even when there was nothing to do in the house, it helped to keep a schedule. He was a civilized man, after all, with a house and a married life and a healthy body and soul.

Nudity was a new feeling. When Connie came home and saw him in an apron with nothing else on, her expression had been one of surprise, then mischievousness, then pleasant acceptance as she came over to put her hands on his rear end. Throughout the day, Steven had practiced the casual nakedness, that sense of embarrassed vulnerability, walking around and watering plants and reading books and tidying up. He had laid on the bed and tried masturbating, but he wanted to wait for Connie. Why use his hands when he could be used by his wife?

The whole house was seeping with sexuality. As the days went by, Steven could feel it in the walls, in the floor, in the passage from room to room. They were wearing clothes less frequently in the house, touching and kissing each other more. They woke up in sweaty heaps of limbs and hair, two skin tones rubbing together like where the ocean met the horizon. Their lips touched and their hands knotted together and they were a mess of love.

Scenes were still infrequent. Maybe that wasn’t even the right word, but Steven’s research hadn’t led him to any better conclusions. It took time to get clean and ready for play. Instead of sex taking precedent for their power dynamic, Steven took the pleasure in waiting on Connie like a servant. She didn’t order him around every day, nor did she dismiss him as some tool. Steven loved doing things for his wife anyway, and now there was something intimate in a way there hadn’t been before. Knowing that Connie felt the same way, knowing that he was getting off on being ordered, all helped Steven to go about their activities with a sense of arousal. 

Parallel to that feeling, Steven knew he was fortunate to fall in love with Connie more and more each day. Their domesticity was a blessing. He would stop the chores sometimes and just sit down, meditating. Meditation was something he had taught himself to do outside of therapy, and he had mentioned it before to the praise of their therapist. Lying or sitting down, Steven would think about the good things, about the way he loved Connie and the communication he had with her and his family back home. Health came first. He never meditated unless he was in a good place, and he had to work to get there through chores, activities, hobbies, talking with his father or the Gems back home.

Steven made a promise to Connie after that night on the beach that he wouldn’t try to transform again without her there. Really, as much as the experiment had gone right, it had been a silly thing to do, some proof of concept the more he thought about it. But he didn’t regret the monstrosity, nor did he have to apologize for what he had done. Connie understood that he had needed to do it for himself. He was old enough for self-discovery.

As he dried off in the bathroom now, Steven looked down at the tiles. He had spent an afternoon piecing them back together with spit. There were still small cracks and missing pieces, and he could see the place where he had fallen on his ass. The man smirked and turned back to the mirror with a shrug. Some things couldn’t be helped. He finished drying off his legs, one at a time, then slung the towel over the top of the shower.

She was waiting for him. Steven shook out his hair one more time. It would dry eventually. They would probably be taking another shower afterwards. Before he left the bathroom, Steven glanced at his reflection and lifted a hand to his jaw. He rubbed the bone underneath, fingers pricking on the shadow of stubble.

They would have to talk about talking. When Steven had turned on the beach, it had been a struggle to get the words out, and he could barely understand himself. The restructuring of his muscles and bones, painful as it was, exacerbated the limits of their communication. Feeling the sharp teeth in his mouth made Steven balk sometimes. It was the nature of the beast. Connie would have to find a way to get his yesses and nos somehow. 

But were there ever nos? Steven grinned at his reflection before becoming stony-faced again. In the future, there might be. And would he be a monster then? Steven put both hands up to his temples where the horns had grown and rubbed the tender skin. That was something else he had to talk to Connie about. She was fucking a monster, though not in so many words. He wondered whether or not calling himself that was helpful. There were so many words that carried baggage with them. Transformation, shapeshifting, changing, morphing, monster, beast, animal — Steven didn’t like any of them when he thought about them for any length of time. Either he would have to accept one, or they would have to scour their vocabularies for something better.

The man walked to the bedroom in a haze. When he came in, he watched Connie adjust the leather straps on her hips. The unfortunate part of their collection, as it turned out, was that many toys were only compatible with the manufacturer’s strap-ons and the accessories. There was no universal sex toy receptacle besides the hands. It was fun, but it wasn’t precisely what they were looking for. Connie had bought some different sizes, one of which was even larger than their previous recorded one. The toy, which laid on the pillow at the head of the bed with its brethren, was almost three inches wide and long enough to make Steven wince. But then again, when he had transformed in the bathroom, taking the big toy had been easier, and he had been bigger. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he thought; still, he clenched. Maybe later.

For now, Connie turned to him, hands out and smiling. She looked beautiful. Steven’s eyes traveled from her smile down to the dangling cock that jutted out from her crotch. The new accessory was curved upwards, just enough to be noticable.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think you’re more ready than I am.”

“You did fine the last time, Steven.”

“I know, but I… I was human the last time.”

“You’re always human. Even when you don’t look or feel it, you’re always human. Okay?”

Steven chewed the inside of his lip. Something was eating at him, and he wasn’t sure what. He stepped up to Connie, hands on her hips. She put her own on his shoulders, and they swayed together in the bedroom. The toy prodded Steven’s slowly hardening cock.

“What if I’m not, though, or if I wasn’t?” Steven murmured. “Would you be okay if you knew that it was just...me? That being me meant not being human?”

Connie looked down in thought. Steven didn’t mean to bring the mood somewhere else, but it was important to talk about. When he transformed, he didn’t think of himself necessarily as human or inhuman. He was just different shades of Steven. He had to think of himself in those terms, so as not to lose himself. As long as he could be Steven, he could turn his body into anything he wanted. Identity was crucial. The thought, complicated as it was, failed to come onto his tongue. It was something he could only feel, and Connie had to trust him. The woman looked up and sighed. 

“I guess you’re always going to be something new,” she said.

“Heh. How’s it feel, to be married to an alien?”

“Call me the happiest woman on and off Earth. It’s out of this world.”

Steven lowered his forehead until it touched Connie’s, and the two laughed quietly together. There was the ability to revel in their sexiness, to be bare and real together, that Steven loved. He moved closer, sliding the silicone upwards against his belly, feeling Connie’s bare breasts against his torso. They rocked in tandem until Connie put pressure on Steven’s shoulders.

“Do it,” she murmured. “Become for me.”

“I’ll go as far as I can.”

Just like he had before, Steven stepped back and closed his eyes. For the third time in his life, he was voluntarily turning into the creature that he feared so much. There was genuine fear behind him, something that was never going to stop itching in the back of his mind. He would never be able to forgive himself if he lashed out during these moments. This should have been a perfect marriage, a perfect sexual union, without the fear of violence. It made Steven sick when he thought about the violence that could happen behind closed doors. This wasn’t about those moments. This was about them together.

He was always amazed at how his nerves reacted. The sensitivity in his hips, his skin, his muscles, and tendons was all magnified. Steven imagined that his nipples were more sensitive now, although he was hesitant to check. The stretching happened everywhere. Steven could feel his feet scrape against the smooth hardwood as he grew into the half-formed creature Connie wanted him to be. 

The nails turned into claws on his hands and feet, spines emerging from his skin once more. It wasn’t just her. Steven wanted this in the bedroom. When he had masturbated that one time, he had felt his nerves react differently. Something was different in his body. Obviously, yes, something was different, but he knew there was something more. Perhaps, Steven thought, the weight of his mind was creating pinpricks on his body, accentuating the feeling, accelerating the way he reacted. More stress and more change meant more nerve energy. What if his body was creating brand new nerves as he grew?

The eyes were black, he knew. Despite the insistence, he couldn’t understand what Connie saw in him. Steven certainly thought he was ugly. It didn’t matter. When he opened his eyes and looked down at his wife, she was smiling, lips relaxed, her body poised and readied for him. The man’s heightened senses told him she was invested. Maybe it was just his imagination, but Steven sensed a different kind of arousal in Connie’s body. The woman ran a hand down his chest, and he shivered with the touch.

“Get on your hands and knees on the bed,” she ordered softly. “Don’t want to tear up the mattress now.”

There were disadvantages to the back spikes, it seemed. They could always order a new bed, new pillows. Steven was no stranger to the destruction of a household. Now was the time for restraint so that they could keep as much as possible. He turned away from Connie and did as he was told, lumbering onto the sheets. They had pushed their comforter onto the floor. The claws would have destroyed it immediately.

As he got into position, Steven suddenly remembered having a tail. The thought was a shot to the gut, instant and strange. He kept his bones under control here, but the memory came back regardless. When he had turned so many years ago, he had been unbalanced, literally monstrous and too massive to keep himself upright without the magical bonds. Having a tail behind him had given him the strength and balance to run into the ocean, to throw himself against the cliff, had given him the ability to remain upright when there were things restraining him. What would Connie do if he grew a tail? To Steven, as he spread his legs apart and pushed his growling face into the mattress, that would be too far. But there was no “too far” yet, not with Connie, not with their love.

The woman walked around the bed, breathing deeply. Each breath she took, Steven felt as though he could feel the vibrations in the air, the disruption of the condensation and the beauty in each motion. This was what it was like to be an animal and a human being, to turn into a magical creature. Every sense was heightened, every motion part of his world. Steven was hyperaware of his blood in his veins, and he could feel it flowing down between his legs, swelling up into his cock. It was arousing just to be in the presentation position for his wife. 

“You’re so beautiful, Steven. You’re...massive.”

Even though she was just a bit shorter, Connie had never felt diminutive to Steven. His bulk compared to her lithe musculature was just part of who they were together. It wasn’t until he turned here that he truly felt the size difference. And did it matter, with the power that Connie had over him? She had been the one to turn him back into a boy with a kiss, and she had all the power over him here. Steven shuddered, clenching the muscles of his hole as the electric sensation ran down his body.

“I’m going to listen to you when I’m inside you,” Connie murmured, and Steven felt her climb onto the bottom of the bed. “And when it gets too much, when you can’t take and more, then I’ll finish you off. But you’re going to take it, Steven. Like a good boy.”

 _Good boy._ The words rang in Steven’s ears, and he growled in response, salivating into the sheets. He grabbed a pillow and hugged it under his face, burying himself in and twisting his mouth into the cushion. Being a good boy was something he had always strived for. Hearing it from his wife, hearing it in a sexual context, gave him a feeling he couldn’t identify. It came from somewhere inside, deep inside, just like his monstrous body, just like his Gem powers. The feeling was both well-defined as it surged around his body and undefinable as he tried to get the words into his head. 

Steven was in a wordless place. He opened his mouth and he could sense the human speech buried in the sounds, but there was nothing coherent that came out. A low rumble, like a purr, vibrated his throat and torso. He heard Connie laugh gently behind him, bemused by his plight. But she must have understood the issue with communication. They didn’t need it for the time being, but when Steven was at his limit, he would have to find a way to tell her what was going on.

The hands felt different. Connie barely had room to kneel behind Steven, even with his horns almost pushed up against the board. His swollen cheeks radiated heat as Connie massaged them in slow circles. She spread them apart tautly, even more than the man’s position was doing already, and Steven felt her lean down and blow cool air right onto the hole. He shuddered from the sensation, mewling into the pillow. His nerves tingled all the way down his taint.

Coolness was replaced with warmth, hot breath, as Connie lowered her tongue between Steven’s cheeks. The man took a shaky breath as the wet muscle traveled up the fuzz of his perineum and up to his entrance. The pressure was gentle, and yet moved Steven with force. It took all the effort in his body not to push back as Connie’s tongue touched the tip of the hole. The tight muscle felt like it was melting under her.

She couldn’t get all the way in, and tongue penetration was impossible with her human strength as it was, but Steven still felt Connie’s tongue fold itself and press in between the cracks, trying to get inside as it played. Steven huffed and shook with pleasure, warmth spreading through his entire lower body. Connie dug her fingers into her husband’s muscles, her fingertips sending searing electricity through Steven’s thighs. The man grunted deeply, trying to keep himself tethered despite the overwhelming sensations.

The heft of his cock was something new. It was heavier now, and he supposed it was something he had developed as an adult, as he hadn’t remembered anything when he was a teenager. Being in limbo between a monster and a human was different in a sexual context. When Connie lowered her hands to the meat, even the gentlest squeeze felt strange, especially with her tongue still rimming him. Her hands, her strong and slender fingers, grasped Steven’s cock lightly, just enough to get a grip on the skin. When she began to pump, Steven knew he was leaking already, squeezing transparency out onto the sheets.

It was pleasurable, of course, but different now. Every part of him belonged to Connie. Even though he wanted to communicate, all that he allowed to come out of him were the thrumming noises of his bestial side. This was what Connie had wanted. What could he say now, what could he have whispered into the pillow? Just as his body belonged to Connie, so did his tongue and his words. The woman stroked between his legs, milking him slowly, running the skin up and down the cusp of his head. Her wrists came up and nudged the heft of his sack, shifting the churning balls as they hung down. The wiry hair still curled, but its length was negligible compared to how much more skin there was now, how much body there was around it.

When Connie withdrew, Steven felt his whole body deflate with the release. He was a good boy, staying still even though his nerves were telling him to thrash around. The desire only grew as Connie slid her fingers down and pressed against the fing. The spit helped immensely, but Steven tensed up, and as the fingertips pressed Steven could feel his body resisting.

“Hn _ah_! Hno, ‘s-s too…”

“Okay, okay baby, I got you.”

“Mrrrrrrrrgh…” Steven growled.

It didn’t take a genius to understand what Steven had been trying to say, but luckily for Steven, he had the smartest wife ever. The man breathed a sigh of relief. Listening to himself talk was like hearing another language. He wanted to speak entirely in growls. Something deep in his throat seemed to have a mind of its own. It was just the way his brain and tongue were working in conjunction now, but it still disturbed him to know what was happening. English would be lost after some time.

Connie stood up and slide off the bed to the side. She muttered something Steven couldn’t hear, half to herself, something about the lube. The bottle was on the nightstand in front of Steven’s face, and his eyes followed it as Connie picked it up. The woman paused, then lowered a hand to ruffle Steven’s hair. The fingers in his scalp made the man utter a deep, throaty purr. His skin shivered with the gentle pleasure.

There would be harder pleasures to come, so Steven knew he had to revel in the soft ones. Connie was soft as she came up behind him and popped the lid. The warm liquid seeped in between Steven’s cheeks, and Connie shushed the man’s soft growling as her fingers came back up to massage it onto the hole. Steven could sense the tenderness in her touch and feel the tenderness in his ring. The lube slicked up the entrance where Connie was pushing a millimeter at a time, edging herself inside Steven so slowly. 

“Tell me if you need me to slow down, Steven,” she said. “Tell me, as best you can, and I’m always listening, alright?”

Steven shifted his haunches. He closed his eyes as Connie poured just a little more lubricant onto her fingertips before pressing inside. Steven felt the curve go over the edge of the ring, pushing the muscle until, finally, the two fingers opened him up and pressed through to his insides. Connie’s body made contact with his soft tissue, slipping into the warmth of his passage, and Steven tried not to clench around his wife’s joints.

He felt her move so gently, so slowly inside of him. Getting penetrated by Connie meant more than sex. Steven closed his eyes and let his mouth hang open, grunts of inhuman pleasure rolling out of him softly. Their wedding rings rested together on the end table, and Steven pushed back as Connie’s knuckles pressed against his skin. This was the sensation he was familiar with. Connie reached deep and held him there, teasing the sensitive passage, shushing his grunts with candor and love. He was at her mercy. For all his power, for all the power that he wanted to release, he would do nothing without the woman in control.

The fingers rested deep inside him. Steven heard the bottle open again, and from the motions behind him Steven knew that Connie was lubing herself up for the main event. What did she get out of it, Steven wondered. Was the power worth it? She moved with precision as she crouched. Steven shivered as her fingers slipped out, past the tension of his hole and out to the taint.

Connie had to balance on her feet as she raised her body to meet her husband. Steven gripped the pillow and growled as the head of the dildo started to rub against him. He knew he shouldn’t be nervous. This wasn’t the first time he had been penetrated.

But in this form, with this feeling, the sensation was new. Connie was in control and she was in person, not some figment he was using to stay grounded. Her hands were flesh as she gripped his cheek and steadied the toy with her right hand. The heat and heartbeat were real as the head of Connie’s cock pushed through, slick and smooth, stretching him out. Steven let out a haunting cry of pleasure as he was filled up once more. The toy slid up through his ass, pushing deep against his insides. Connie sighed, patting his thigh.

“There there, good boy. Now you know what it feels like. Does it feel good?”

Steven huffed, then let out a stuttered mewl, an attempt at a nod, his horns rising and falling with his head. Connie steadied herself on the bed and began to rock back and forth.

The attached penis wasn’t much bigger than Steven was in his human form, but it was immutable, warm in a different sense, and Connie knew how to use it to make it feel like it was an extension of her pelvis as she moved herself. Each thrust opened and tugged on Steven’s hole. He was fucked, truly, and he felt the size pushing into him.

This was the beast that had to be tamed. Steven felt his penetration and he knew he had to fall in love with it like he had to fall in love with Connie. Not only was she on top, but she was in control of him and his pleasure. If she wanted, she could turn him over and stroke him. For now, it was the sensation of his insides being rubbed that made him leak precum onto the sheets. The curved bottom of the toy rubbed gently against his prostate, sending another wave of pleasure through him.

Steven grunted and let his mouth fall open, strands of spit connected between his teeth, his ragged breaths making inhuman sounds in Connie’s rhythm. As his wife fucked him, he could feel himself sweat and shake. The power coursing through his body could destroy the bed, destroy the house, and yet he remained still for the woman. With a fraction of his musculature, he pushed back against the toy as he was hilted. The pressure of the cock inside of him was enough to make him cry out, deep and guttural.

“That’s my good boy, Steven,” Connie murmured. “Tell me how good it feels to get _fucked_.”

There were no words, but Steven clenched his teeth together and growled for his wife. The mewling, submissive sounds were more than enough. He belonged to her in this moment, underneath her thrusting hips, below her metabolism. Her human legs were enough to keep him pinned down for hours. Steven pushed himself upright. The man, on his hands and knees, leaned back. Connie gripped Steven by the hips.

“No! Down!”

The harsh words made Steven pause and look back. Connie shook her head at him. Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead. There was a smile behind her glare, but Steven felt himself wither.

“Crrrn?”

“You can ride when I say so. Get back down.”

Slowly, Steven arched his back and lowered himself to the pillow shamefully. Using his force on the toy had felt good, but Connie was right. He couldn’t lose control here. The more he gave into the sensation, the more he would lose of himself. But that’s what it was about, and Steven closed his eyes as Connie raised herself to fuck him more. His hands stretched out flat and gripped the bedsheets. Wet slaps began to fill the room as Connie increased her pace.

As long as he was like this, he had to remain in control. Minutes ticked past. Connie’s legs continued to push against him. Her hips came into contact with his ass, skin to skin and skin to scale. Connie wanted him like this to be his mistress. It wasn’t just Steven submitting to his wife anymore; all of his uncontrollable feelings were in her hands. All of the things he thought had been involuntary were part of her world now. Steven felt the spines on his back twisting in his skin, projections made real, crystals of pain etched in his skin. 

It wasn’t about getting fucked. The sexual sensations were pleasurable, and they were nothing compared to the sensation of being himself. With all his nerves in overdrive, Steven huffed and groaned without words, continuously making sounds that he couldn’t stop from coming out. It was about… It was…

Connie pushed inside of him as far as she could. Steven barked, his whole body tensing up. When she pulled out again, the woman leaned back, and slowly, the toy slid pas the tight ring until, with a grunting cry from the man below, the head popped with a bounce out of Steven’s sore hole.

“That’s enough training for today,” she panted behind him. “Goodness. I could barely keep that up for a half-hour. I don’t know how you do it, honey.”

Had it been that long? It was long enough for Connie’s intonation to change. Steven didn’t want to look at the clock. Human contraptions meant nothing to him right now. Obediently, he remained where he was, letting the last few noises seep past his lips. Connie pulled on the back of his knees. The man shuffled his legs back until he was lying on his stomach. The sheets where he had gripped were shredded from the claws.

He could feel Connie sitting on the edge of the bed. What was she saying? The words came out about her legs, about how he felt, maybe a question in there somewhere about trying more later. Steven could feel his erection as he laid down, the swollen length throbbing as it was trapped between his stomach and the mattress. It wasn’t about either of them getting off, it seemed. When he did cum, he knew that Connie wouldn’t be able to swallow it all if she wanted to, that it would flood her insides if she took him. But if she made him orgasm, maybe it would be while she was inside of him, just like how he used to be inside her. Things changed. Power shifted. He had never truly been in power, Steven thought. It had been an equal exchange, something shared.

This was something shared too. Connie rested a hand on the back of the man’s thighs, patting him softly. He could feel her laughter at the fact that he couldn’t hear her question. Her finger slipped up again, and squeezed Steven’s cheeks, massaging softly. There was that connection again. Steven opened his black eyes and took a massive breath. He turned his head towards Connie, and with a mouth full of predatory teeth, smiled as innocently as he could.


	7. Her Observation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Connie and Steven go out to dinner.

* * *

Connie loved watching Steven’s face when the waitress had complimented his collar. The leather choker with the little star charm dangled around the man’s neck, just tight enough to be fashionable, and just loose enough to give him space.

Steven and Connie liked cooking well enough for them to go our fairly infrequently. Snacks like ice cream or floats made for nice microdates, but a full-on meal was relatively rare. There simply wasn’t any reason to go when they could do enough at home. Still, tonight felt special in that way that neither one of them could place. Connie liked to think that they still had some psychic connection, but that was the fantastic in her. The realist said that they simply knew each other well enough to know when they could go out to eat.

The restaurant was lightly populated, certainly sparsely lit. A lush aura of romance came through the darkly stained furniture and the abundance of candles. The bulbs from the ceiling were covered in swirled glass domes, hand-painted, matching the swirling music that drifted around them. The bar had a few patrons, with no loud television or sportscast to disrupt the atmosphere. Black-shirted waiters and waitresses milled around, navigating the grid of tables expertly on their heels. Lo-fi bass and house piano drifted through the air. Scents of the grill and the American fare wafted up through Connie’s nostrils. The two of them sat near the bar, at a small wooden table covered with a tan tablecloth.

“I think I’m gonna go veg tonight,” Steven said as he flipped through the menu. “I think this place is nice but they might not be local. I don’t know, I don’t see anything on the menu about it.”

“I’m kinda surprised. This place is ritzy compared to the other restaurants on the block.”

“Hey, the Korean place is pretty cool! But you’re right, between this and Metro? I’d rather have a sandwich made here.”

“Well, if they could source their beef correctly, anyway. You know what, I’m really feeling eggplant parm tonight. I think I’m right there with you.”

“I am...torn between that and the tofu stir-fry. If they can do tofu worth half a damn then I’m game. God, I wish I could handle a burger right now. That smells amazing.”

“There’s also pasta stuff?” Connie suggested. “Tortellini...soup? Okay, maybe not that specific one, but like a veggie alfredo.”

“...oh, man, with broccoli.”

Steven narrowed his eyes as he flipped to the other sections of the menu. He read intently, studying every ingredient. Connie knew what he was doing. It was one of the quirks that Steven learned from her early on, something she used to do in her youth. The older she got, the more she trusted things on menus. Her husband’s interest in the mundane made her smile.

He looked handsome tonight. She made him shave down just enough to leave the shadow of stubble on his face, a blockbuster look that fit his jawline well. The suit jacket over the t-shirt gave him a mature look, something manly, something traditional. There was no shame in tradition. His distinguished khakis had been pressed, and Connie even told him to get out his good shoes tonight. Her red dress had turned a few eyes as she walked into the restaurant, with the slit on the side that traveled up her thigh, opening to show off her skin whenever she stepped forward. With Steven in tow, she felt like they were a power couple. He had helped with a light makeup and arranging her hair, having studied for the past couple days on her command. Steven didn’t need much of a refresher. 

Before they had dressed up, there were two surprises Connie had sprung on Steven. The first was around his neck now, and he played with it absentmindedly as he read through. The second was underneath his khakis under lock and key. The cage made a nice little bulge against the man’s zipper, but only Connie knew its purpose. 

Things had been more human over the past few days. When Connie looked at the whites of Steven’s eyes, she felt their opposition to his wild side, their relative tameness. Steven the human being, Steven the Gem hybrid, always wanted to do things for her, was more than eager to submit to the whims of his wife. Connie could feel herself getting off on the pleas for  _ mistress _ , on those bright and beautiful gazes whenever Steven looked up, tongue lolling out like a puppy as he offered to lick wherever she wanted. He didn’t resist as she put cuffs on him, as she bent him over and dragged her fingers across his body. The cage had to be cleaned as his human side rode a toy and leaked through, the flesh pushed up against the curved metal bars as his prostate was rubbed on her demands. Watching his legs pump reminded her of their posture, of his spine, of the times when they had been covered in pink. It reminded Connie of reptilian origins, a primordial sense of desire, of taming him. There was humanity, and there was human nature. She was intrigued by the latter and its involuntary emergence. When Steven had transformed, there was an unwilling force she could control, that Steven had to control. The word rolled off her tongue inside her mind, again and again.

The woman sighed and reached for her glass of red. Steven had hardly touched his lemonade, but he looked up and took his glass in turn. Connie knew he was trying to study her.

“Still thinking about that parm?” he joked.

Connie locked eyes with her husband. As he sipped, they stared at one another. Underneath the table, Connie shifted her hips and extended one leg carefully, its length sliding across the divide until she knew precisely where her foot was. The heel of her shoe pressed just enough against the man’s groin to feel the metal cage.

Steven twitched, eyes widening at the touch, spilling a little lemonade over the crook of his thumb. He set the glass down hard and reached for his napkin shakily as Connie giggled at the reaction.

“C-Connie! You can’t just —  _ do _ that!”

“Are you telling me what to do? Are you being a bad boy?”

Steven’s face flushed as red as marinara as he wiped himself up. Connie raised a finger to her lips as she watched Steven open and close his mouth, stuttering out a half-answer, unwilling to cooperate with his brain. It was a question with no winners, and while Connie hated to be cruel, Steven glanced up with a shy little grin. He was in on the joke. While they were in public, Connie was still his queen, and she knew he knew it.

With the wine and the dress and the makeup, Connie felt surprisingly powerful. The one thing she had to keep in mind was that she couldn’t let this go to her head. First and foremost, the love she had for Steven was romantic, based on human equality. Whatever power dynamic they had was for fun and for pleasure. Carnal love was still love. Connie enjoyed feeling the power, feeling that agency, even when it should have made her feel pity for Steven. If the man wasn’t enjoying himself so much, Connie would have felt so awkward.

The fact of the matter was that Steven had the same intangible feeling that she did. The one lesson that Connie had had to learn, and the one she still wasn’t certain about, was the lesson that there were no words for the feeling of enjoying their rough love. Sadism and masochism were just terms, terms that didn’t encompass the love, the specific manner of power that allowed Connie to thrust her hips up against Steven’s ass, that let her take a riding crop and make marks across his cheeks and chest. Connie had to be comfortable with the undefinable. In college, everything had a term, everything had a branch of exploration. There was so much mystery but also so much discovery. Connie realized that a lot of her feelings were related to the Gems. Their branches of technology, far beyond human means, were created in a language that was so untranslatable it might as well be magic. Well, maybe they could create some human magic in the bedroom. How about that.

“You’re my good boy,” Connie said after a sip. “You’re my handsome boy.”

Steven reached up and tugged on the star reflexively. The yellow charm was set in a silver outline, five rounded points attached to a chain attached to the leather strap.

“Connie, jeez, I feel like everyone’s looking at us,” Steven mumbled.

A quick glance confirmed for Connie that absolutely nobody was paying them any mind. There were two gentlemen at the bar counter who looked to be old enough to use the word ‘reminisce’ unironically. A family with their twin toddlers was eagerly coloring together in a booth. A group of college students laughed around a table over spiral notebooks and prosciutto.

“Steven, I think you’re just nervous.”

“Well, I know I’m nervous, and that’s just making things worse.”

“Is there, anything, practically, that I can do to make this better for you.”

“...no, I think I’m a lost cause,” Steven said. “And I know what you’re gonna say — that that means I shouldn’t care what anyone thinks, that we should just enjoy ourselves, and Connie, I want to, but things are different now!”

“I think you’re right. Do you want to talk about it!”

“Are you two ready to order?”

Katie, their waitress, had come up without Steven or Connie realizing it. The young woman smiled down at the flustered man and the concerned woman, little clipboard in hand. Her bangs waved gleefully down, as if they knew what had happened underneath the tablecloth. Connie smiled back, holding up her menu. 

“Yes! I think tonight I’ll have your eggplant parmesan with the house salad,” Connie said, “and my husband will take your vegetarian alfredo, also with a the salad. Would it be possible to get some more garlic bread, too?”

“Absolutely, we can do that. Great choices, and we’ll get right started on that.”

Steven gave back his menu sheepishly, without a word. Katie took his and Connie’s and tucked them under her arm as she walked away with their empty bread basket. Connie glanced at her husband for a moment as the man reached for his lemonade again. Her finger curled up underneath her chin as she studied him. She leaned over and rested on the table.

“Okay, was that too much? I feel like that was too much.”

“No! No, that was okay! It was different. I think I was leaning towards the alfredo, anyway.”

“Right, but, was it — we’ve never talked about it, and I took the lead there, and God, Steven, I’m sorry, that was shortsighted of me —”

“Connie, really, it’s okay,” Steven murmured.

He put his drink back down and leaned on the table to mirror Connie. The man raised an eyebrow, acting as though the motion could cover up the blush on his ruddy cheeks.

“It was kinda hot.”

Well, there was no arguing with that. Connie watched the star dangle from her husband’s neck and sighed. She had to accept the magic. The wave of doubt that came from her action was not extraordinary, but naturally human. She felt as though she had stepped on Steven’s toes. That was nothing compared to marking up his back, though. 

They had to distinguish things in and out of the bedroom. Connie took another mouthful of wine. If they were going to do this correctly, they needed to talk about boundaries before they were broken. But hadn’t that talk already happened? Connie had told Steven what he was going to wear, what his new accessory was, and Steven had accepted that before they walked out of the house. Whether or not he had meant it was another story. But then again, Connie thought, she had to trust that Steven would speak up if something was wrong. Trusting him with that was difficult to say the least. 

It was Connie’s turn to have the bad memories. She recalled the moment that she had first laid eyes upon the pinkness of Steven’s teenage rebellion, the first and only time she had seen him with the pink pupils, eight feet tall and dripping with anxiety. He hadn’t asked for help, and it had turned him into the beast that she fucked whenever Steven was ready for it now. The violence behind his actions then had been so strange, so detached from reality, that Connie still felt fear when she thought of it.

There was no fear when she had Steven on a metaphorical leash. How could she be so afraid of the past, but so dominant in the present. It was a difficult juxtaposition. Inside of Connie, she knew there was still some manner of fear, and it would be ridiculous to call it anything else. Within that fear, then, there had to be trust. She trusted herself to be in control, as she had ever since her first day meeting Steven. She trusted him not to hurt her, as she always had. The only time she had been worried about Steven hurting her was during the moment he had turned, and even then she had been more afraid of him hurting himself.

Steven didn’t want to hurt her, and that feeling was so sincere; obviously it was, or he wouldn’t have had anxiety about that previously. But it wasn’t about want as much as it was pain. Connie watched her husband’s smile and knew that he was still recovering. The center of every cut tree showed where it had survived a fire, deep within its rings.

“I trust that you thought it was hot, and I respect that,” Connie said slowly. “I would personally be more comfortable if we set limits for what we did in public, so that we don’t have to worry about anything happening in the future.”

“Absolutely! I — oh, thank you.”

Katie set the garlic bread in front of them and bobbed away with another smile. Steven grabbed a piece and tore at the buttered crust. As their waitress walked away again, Connie gestured after her and raised her eyebrows.

“Like poor Katie there. If she knew that I had poked you under the table, what would she say? There are kids at that table over there. Nobody else in here is — I’ll say it. Nobody else is consenting to us playing around. It has to be secret. Or, should I not do it at all?”

“Well there’s the thing,” Steven said with a mouthful of bread. “We don’t know what other adults are going to care or not, and the ones that absolutely do care, well, they might have trauma of their own. But we can’t know. So, you’re right that we should be cautious. But if they have no idea about what’s going on, are they still harmed? It’s not even that, too. They have no idea what’s going on under here.”

He pointed to his crotch. Connie waved his hand down from across the table as he giggle and coughed up crumbs.

“We’re really not exhibitionists. I mean, no, I’ll speak for myself, I’m not really… This is the first time that I thought about the public aspect. It’s not that people see, it’s that it’s hidden and secret, and I’m still...not sure. That’s what I’m getting at. Is this okay, Steven? Just in general?”

“What is and isn’t ‘okay’ is gonna vary a lot. Like, I did some research when you were at work, right? And there are meetups in the area for kink couples, LGBT places and stuff, places where everyone just hangs out and gets coffee. In somewhere like that, it would be totally okay for you to do that, I assume.

“But,” Steven continued, “it would lose that aspect of being hidden. It wouldn’t be as hot anymore since all the people around would be in on it. The fact that nobody around here knows? I think that’s part of it. And that secrecy goes deeper. Katie doesn’t know I grow horns. Those friggin’ kids over there have no idea what’s been inside me. And that’s another feeling. I won’t call it arousal but it’s something.”

“It’s something important to consider, I know. I don’t think we’re getting anywhere,” Connie sighed. “Because this isn’t about getting anywhere. I think I’m trying to get over my own embarrassment, and God, Steven, there’s such a discrepancy between who I am in public and who I am with you when we’re alone, it’s unimaginable.”

“I can imagine it! I’m looking at you right now, I’m seeing the way you talk. And it’s just a little different, but it’s there.”

“The way I ordered for you, let’s look at that. Yeah, you thought how you thought about it, but that’s blurring the line. I don’t even know if blurring that line is okay. Like, where does it end? I did some looking up too, Steven. There are whole conventions, playspaces where we could do all this in front of a crowd. People would pay to see you transform.”

That one made Steven glance to the side. Connie watched his eyes flicker. The man’s fingers reached up to mess with his charm and collar nervously.

“See, that’s where  _ I _ draw the line,” he said. “Not that I wouldn’t be okay with...doing it in front of people, not if it was part of the scene. If there’s like-minded folks, if there are people we can trust, I’d let you do anything to me. That’s —  _ ow _ — that’s getting me thinking.”

“But there’s no like-minded folks for our...other stuff.”

“Right — right, exactly! Nobody knows what the heck we’ve been through together! I would love to have you understand, but not even Stevonnie could do that! And you’re the closest one that I could ever explain that to, more than the Gems now, more than my dad. You’ve… Heh. Well, you’ve been inside there.”

Connie finished off her wine and put the empty glass back on the cloth softly. She nodded and pulled off a piece of garlic bread for herself. He was right, of course, and she respected the thought process. There was nobody that could understand where Steven had been on the face of reality. Unless there was a Gem in Beach City who wanted to give herself up to a human like Rose Quartz, there would never been another Steven. That was a frightening but very real prospect that Connie hadn’t considered. In her line of work, she dealt more with the ecological impact and communicative aspects, but in the future, well, anything was possible.

That was the future. This was the now. Connie crossed her arms and took a bite of the garlic bread. The bread was well-oiled and herbed, and there were little pieces of garlic baked into the bread itself. Not bad at all. Connie chewed as Steven reached for the end piece to crunch. 

“We have to come up with some unified name for all of this,” the woman said. “Because there’s all those verbs, but there’s nothing, like, no word for it that we’ve been using.”

“I like it when you ask me to ‘become.’ But that’s so formal. It’s practically high fantasy.”

“Well, okay, let’s think about you. When you… When that happens, when you change, what do you feel like? Do you feel like a different Steven, or an animal, or a...monster?”

“I really don’t like ‘monster,’” Steven interrupted. “I get the connotations and the appearance and everything, but I just — I just don’t like it. When I transformed, I felt monstrous afterwards. And I kept marinating on the word —”

“Ruminating?”

“That’s it. Yeah, I kept ruminating, and the more that I thought about myself, it’s like the word and the image played with themselves over and over in my head, so much so that it didn’t feel like a part of me anymore. And I can’t have that. I gotta, I gotta center it. I have to have it become something that I can have inside.”

“Terror, but you’re not really terrifying, and that’s kinda — terror, horror, nightmare, all those things are so weird, they’re not like you. Those aren’t the right words. Okay, how about… Shoot. This is tough.”

“Oh, wait a second! How about ‘beast?’”

“Like that old cartoon,  _ The Beautiful Beast _ , like that?”

“Exactly like that. It’s got the same kind of monster punch, but I haven’t destroyed my brain with the word, and there’s that sense of redemption too. I think that’s exactly what we need, that kind of a ‘coming back,’ from the brink.”

Steven paused for a second. His hand gripped his glass as he chewed on the last remnant of the crust. It was still mostly full of ice, with the lemonade looking almost orange in the light of the restaurant. Connie knew he didn’t like the cold that much, not unless it was a hot day. She remembered when they laid on the lawn, the first summer they had moved in, and she had drawn letters on his bare back in ice trails as he had guessed the word. They were practically kids then. They were practically kids now, or so it felt.

“Beast. I’m your collared beast,” Steven said, smiling and tugging at his charm again.

“Heh. As long as it’s healthy for us.”

“Yeah. I’ve been wondering about that.”

“What specifically?”

“What I’ve been doing. I think… Well, I think I can go further. Inside myself. It’s nothing like when I changed as a kid, but what if I could take it to that next level?”

Connie remembered the sight of the house’s walls being torn away as Steven ran from the house out to the beach. She remembered the literal explosion of crystals on Steven’s back as the beast emerged in all its horrid glory. She remembered looking up into the sky, watching Steven claw his way, naked and terrifying, into being.

“What does the next level mean for you health-wise, though?” Connie said. “It’s not just about whether or not you can do it, it’s whether or not you can come back from it, and if it’s going to be good for you.”

“Whenever… Whenever I become the beast, there’s always something telling me that I’m still human, tethering me to that body. And I feel that the ultimate control, my goal, is to go completely into beast-mode and be able to come back from that. It’s not just shapeshifting, I can do that a little still. It’s a whole sort of becoming that I want to do, and it’s… It’s a tangible goal.”

“What do we do if it’s not possible, then? Is that just the end of it, are you stuck in that form, and are you going to be satisfied with that limit? As your wife, Steven, I’m more than happy with where we are. I’m — concerned, I’m concerned about the consequences. No matter how much I trust you, and God, I trust you so much, there’s always something that can go wrong!”

“Well, things have gone wrong, and we still ended up together. What’s the worst that can happen?”

The worst that could happen, Connie thought, was that she could lose her husband forever, just like she had lost her best friend that day on the beach. The effort to get Steven back that time had been monumental. Getting back herself had been so hard. The times she had stayed awake crying into the night thinking about Steven in pain was more than she could admit. She had even been mad at times as a teenager, even as an adult, mad that he took up so much of her mental and emotional real estate. When she was applying to college, whenever she was studying, there was some part of her that thought of this man. Maybe it was an illusion, and she had contextualized it all as love when it was really something horrible, just like how Steven saw his transformation into the beast as strength when really, there was a possibility that it was breaking down his brain and heart one cell at a time. Connie hated herself for hating herself sometimes. It was the same feeling the snake must have understood as it bit into its own tail.

“Just promise me that when you do that, that I’m there with you,” she said.

“Of course. I love you. You know that.”

Connie looked into her husband’s eyes and felt a smile return to her face, but she didn’t know why, and she didn’t know if it was welcome. Katie approached their table with two steaming plates. She had pulled her hair back, Connie noticed.

“There we go, for you,” the woman said, setting one plate down in front of Steven before Connie. “And for you! There we go. Can I get you another glass of red?”

Connie held up her glass. “Please.”


	8. His Limits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven fights the monster.

* * *

Tonight’s dinner was tofu. There was a wonderful recipe with masala sauce and a little cayenne, with broccolini and red peppers on top fo it all. Steven closed the fridge. They had everything that they needed. In a little bit, he could get their food prepared. The man took a deep breath and stretched, raising his hands above his head until his vertebrae popped like little firecrackers. He winced, but there was no pain.

Maybe it was a blessing that would carry on into old age. But Steven knew he couldn’t be around with his good luck forever. Already he found that he gained weight more easily, that his heart didn’t like it when he ate too many sweets or too many carbs. As he got older, he felt older. It was revelatory. Things didn’t seem so strange now that he was grown-up, but the spurt of height and weight and body hair had rushed him through into the place where he was now. Back then, Steven had been so relieved. It meant that he was growing up.

Thoughts and physiology changed together. Steven’s mind became more sexual as he grew up, though he was far from obsessed. Thinking about his body as something that could engage in such lewdness had led to far less explosive moments, and thank goodness. If he had gone through some kind of Gem hyper-puberty, he wouldn’t have been able to look anyone in the eye for the rest of his life, certainly not the Gems, definitely not Connie. 

But she had seen the best and the worst of him, and she was still here, and she was definitely sexually interested. What stoic clarity, what clinical-ness, Steven thought, and he snorted to himself as he walked around the kitchen island. His penis didn’t respond. Stark naked, the man reached down and poked the length. He batted it back and forth a little between his hands, sending his little dangler bouncing like a fishing lure.

“As long as you keep working for me,” he muttered.

He wasn’t entirely naked. Steven reached up and played with the other piece dangling off of him: the charm on his collar. He only took it off to shower, and he was getting used to its comfort around his neck. Steven couldn’t help but smile and waltz a little across the floor, bare feet shuffling across the rug. The weight was perfect. The tension was enough to make him feel it encircle his neck. It was the perfect accessory.

He had dug online into collars and had come up with various results with various levels of confusion. There were couples that had steel collars, welded tightly or locked, that declared a level of permanence that was similar to marriage but much more visceral. Many couples that had those perma-collars were, to Steven’s surprise, married. Other couples had simple chains, complex patterns, locks that were homemade and locks that looked like any purchased at a department store. Steven had stumbled across a dating couple where the woman was collared as a rite of initiation. That one didn’t seem as permanent, and skeeved the man out a little now. The more he researched, the more he found variance. A collar didn’t mean any one thing.

For him, for Connie, it was an extension of love. Of course Steven also had on his ring, and he was so used to wearing the gold band that he forgot about it most of the time. There was a tanline around his finger from where the sun was blocked from his skin. The collar was like a sexual wedding ring for him. There were the implications of animalism, which tied into their secret play, but that was something true only for them and not for all the collared strangers on the internet. Steven’s submission was something like him, something entirely new. Wearing the collar was a comfort to him, and a comfort to Connie as well. It was representative of her control over him, and his willingness to submit.

How fascinating, Steven thought, that his submission was so grounded in sex that it didn’t leak into their love, and yet the two were inextricably linked. Steven and Connie loved each other no matter what, and during intercourse that love was heightened. Their love was on such equal footing, as it had always been, and the two loved each other with what Steven knew were equal amounts, if such a thing could be quantifiable. That amount didn’t change when Steven felt himself in a playful state, when he wanted to be objectified or treated the way he was under Connie’s heel. It was more like a shifting of energy, like clay that had been fashioned into a heart, shaped now into a star, or a dagger, or any number of mutable wonders. Everything had the space to change. Nothing could change who it was inside.

Nothing could change what Steven was inside. The man paused in his swaying. Who was he, inside? The question had been reiterated in so many different ways over the years. Right now, Steven thought about the beast. The beast was Steven, and Steven was that form, but he had transformed before, lost himself before, and that’s where fear lived.

Steven hated feeling afraid. The one thing he had grown up with over the course of his life was his relationship with fear. Learning how to drive had been riddled with fear over the dangers and statistics associated with the highways and byways. Learning his powers meant a fear of what they meant, what he could and couldn’t do with them, how they defined him. Defining himself led to a fear over identity, the one he had struggled with for so many years as a young man. Loving Connie had, at one point, been fearful. There was the fear of losing her. That fear, that particular black spot, never went away.

To think, at one point he had been afraid to hurt her because of the beast, and now he was wearing the beast’s collar. Steven almost smiled at the thought as he pinched the charm between his fingers. The man steered his body towards the island and pulled back a chair, just like he had done all those days ago when Connie talked to him about submission in the first place.

The beast within had laid on his back and ruined a sheet as his spikes had dug into it. Steven remembered the feeling of the larger toys being pushed inside, the new accommodations to his rear end that he could never have taken as a human — not without patience and perhaps a little shapeshifting. If this had been mere shapeshifting, then, the bedroom would be a playground of infinite proportions. Steven could play with his size, make himself too big to stand up, replicate blood cells and tissue at an astonishing pace. He could take hands, arms, bodies even, and the horrible image made Steven cover his mouth as bile suddenly rose up. There had to be limits on his own brain. He didn’t want to go there.

Connie wouldn’t want to go there, either. She seemed content with where Steven was at now in his abilities and his presence. She loved talking to him, talking at him. They had undergone a session where Steven had been on his splayed knees and made all the sounds that he could in an effort to find out what pain was, what pleasure was, confusion, intrigue, distaste, dissatisfaction, uncertainty. As it turned out, Steven could make quite a few animal sounds with that mouth.

“I love you, too,” Steven mumbled to the empty house.

He had spent far too long thinking about what he was. Having been through the debate already when he was a boy, being a man full of potential was a difficult position. It wasn’t a case of identity so much as it was physiology. What was the beast? Steven considered it part of himself, but thinking of himself in ‘parts’ wasn’t helpful; the parts made up the whole, everything was parts, everything was semantics. It wasn’t shapeshifting as he had originally thought. The beast’s transformation was entirely new. To a degree, it was involuntary.

Emotions played a role, and Steven clasped his hands together. The beast was an aspect of becoming. When he thought about submitting to Connie, there was a different thought process involved in the change. Human submission was one mode of thinking, and animal submission was another. The undefinable nature of it all frustrated Steven to no end. The man scrunched up his brow and took a deep breath.

The beast was fear. When he was the beast, there was fear underneath his skin. The original fear, that first sin, had been about hurting Connie, and from there he had changed into the half-human creature. But that was just it. The beast was still half-human. 

Would it always be like this? More than anything, Steven thought with a sigh. There was no escaping his humanity. And yet there had to be a limit. The limit begged him to approach it, teased him with a curled finger, androgynous temptation. At the end of the limit was the end of fear. If he could reach a state where he was in control and his humanity was relinquished, Steven could reach the ultimate goal.

Steven was not a spiritual person at heart. There was permanence in the universe and impermanence within the objects that lived there. He didn’t consider himself a scientist, but he considered himself an optimist. Whatever his lifespan was would be natural for him, as natural as anything could be. There was no degree of enlightenment or some nirvana, nothing deep within himself that he sought for fulfilment in the same way as other meditative practitioners. Talking about ultimate goals felt different when he considered that angle. After all, there was no tangible goal that he could think of for this. There was no certificate that would pop up to tell him that yes indeed he had achieved something existentially perfect related to his fear. The goal was brutal and inexact. 

Without guidelines, there was nowhere to go and everywhere to explore. Steven pushed back the chair and stood up. Mindful meditation was something he hadn’t done since he was a teenager. He had fallen out of practice when he started applying himself to real-world skills and started to get jobs. Being human was a kind of meditation in itself for him.

This would have to be different. First things first. Steven knelt at one end of the rug and rolled it up, rotating the tube and pushing it against the wall. If anything happened, he didn’t want to have to go rug shopping again. It wasn’t as though they couldn’t afford it or that they didn’t enjoy house shopping, but it was just a really nice rug. 

Still crouched on the floor, Steven sighed and bounced on the heels of his feet. The deep squat really got his legs stretched. He got on his knees and sat on the hardwood, pulling his arms across his chest and stretching out the muscles there. Somehow, the transformation felt like it was going to be exercise. Steven was always sore when he was done with Connie and their rough escapades, of course, but there were more taxing things on the body. New frontiers meant new strains.

The man took a deep breath and crawled forward into the middle of the room. There was enough space on his left and right, with the island and the wall, that he wasn’t especially worried. Unless he destroyed the house, nothing bad could happen.

That was just it, though. He made a face as he sat there on his hands and knees like a dog. Steven didn’t want to ruin everything just for a goal. In his head, he had to set limits. Destroying one house was something he had realized, through conversations with other people, was not normal by any means. Most of the time, if a house got destroyed, it ruined a family’s life forever. The ability to have construction work on the house pretty much at any time was something Steven had taken for granted growing up, and while it meant he didn’t get too attached to possessions and buildings, it was still something he had had to outgrow. Having your house destroyed over and over again, as it turned out, caused a little trauma.

Steven thought about Connie’s face if she were to come home to find her house in ruins. It wasn’t just Steven’s home, after all. He was living with a partner, with his other half, his soulmate. He had an obligation to keep her safe. Connie would probably understand, of course, but that didn’t make it normal. Steven hated the thought of her worry if she came home without knowing what he had done. She had stumbled upon him in the garden before during one of his episodes, and in here eyes, Steven had seen Connie relive all the horrible things she had gone through to love Steven. 

He couldn’t bring his brain to that limit right now. He had to think about the positives. Steven reached up and held his charm again and closed his eyes. The man thought about when he had transformed into the beast on the beach, when he still had a semblance of speech to ask her what she had thought, and she had loved him. Accepting that love had been difficult and beautiful. The first love he had, the puppy love, the love of friendship, that was buried somewhere in the multitudinous layers of love they had now. Love was like a flower unfolding, with each petal part of the whole circle.

The beast began to emerge, always at the eyes first. Steven lowered his hand back to the floor and stood like a dog. He opened his eyes, blinked the blackness into being, and everything became manifest again. His senses felt sharper almost instantly, and once he was aware of the world around him, he could feel the rest of his body come into being.

The pink scales were almost always random, thankfully staying away from his genitals as they appeared over the other parts of his body. They meshed into his skin perfectly whenever he looked at them. Steven felt them beginning to form as he grew, bones grinding and muscles growing to match the perfect half-animal look. He looked down at his hands as they grew and morphed, growing thicker and buffer like bear paws or gorilla hands. The formation of the claws curled up into his skin, and he knew they should have hurt like an ingrown nail, but there was nothing but the sensation of flesh changing, which he had felt before.

Human shapeshifting has always been such a strange concept for him. Cells in his body had to manifest and multiply with magical growth, beyond biological capacity, like a cancer. There was skin and blood and bone that all had to appear from his gem, and he had never wanted to think critically about it. If he was in a lab right now, the readings for how his body was doing would be so off the charts that he knew he wouldn’t feel human anymore. Maybe that was a good thing.

Steven smiled as the sharp teeth began to fill his mouth. Things were starting to come together. He always felt the instant gratification once the size was complete, once he was big enough to actually feel big. Being barely taller than Connie was one thing, but towering over her before submitting to her was another. Steven liked feeling low to the ground. It made him feel like an animal. He let out a pant, a sound so hot he could almost sense it in the air. He lolled his tongue out of his mouth.

The one thing Steven had always been strangely keen on was the size of his privates during all of this. The man reached between his legs and grasped himself with one hand. Already thick enough to make Connie stretch, he was even thicker now as the beast, and almost certainly double the length. Steven was thankful that the scales had sealed him up when he was a teenager, so that he hadn’t been running around dragging a monsterous cock through Beach City while on a trauma trip. He almost laughed at the thought before the weight of memory came back down on him like an anvil.

The first time he had transformed in the bathroom, he had been overcome with libido. Now, he was calm enough to focus on the moment, and he could masturbate in peace. Steven pushed himself slowly to his hulking feet, dealing with the vertigo as he adjusted to his new height and size. 

Immediately, his breath caught in his throat. The leather choker, his collar — it was too tight. Why hadn’t he felt that when he was on his hands and knees. The man focused as he wheezed for a second, shrinking the muscles of his neck consciously. There was still some room for shapeshifting in this form, thankfully, and Steven felt the tightness ease off enough for him to relax. He rubbed his throat before looking down.

Getting an erection felt just plain better. The sensitivity was something he had always been happy with when the beast emerged. The head of his cock as he lifted it was plump and smooth, almost glistening in the light with the skin pulled back from the tautness. The rim was practically flared, and it took effort to stroke the skin back over the rim. He didn’t need it right now, anyway. Steven grunted as he just stood in the middle of the room and played with himself gently. If he had the motivation, he would just masturbate right here and now.

But he had to save himself for Connie, and for his exercise. If this was sensitive, the next form would be something else. In his addled consciousness, a question arose: why did Steven consider this his ‘next’ form? He realized he thought of it as an intermediary, something between the beast he was now and the monster that had destroyed his home as a teenager. It was all the worst parts of the monster and all the best parts of domesticity. He had to measure it, almost alchemically in his head, and he didn’t want to think about that right now. He wanted to think about sex. He wanted to think about controlling himself and the pleasure he could gain.

Before that, he had to think about letting go. Steven closed his eyes and lowered himself to his hands and knees again, adjusting to the ‘doggy style’ position. His back, full of spines, cracked gently as he arched it down.

_ Let go. Let go of it all. _

Thought had to leave him entirely. The concept of thought was blocking him from his potential. Steven curled his paws into fists and unclenched them slowly, preparing for the release. There had to be times when he wasn’t thinking. Subconscious tasks, sleeping, the moment of orgasm, standing with a fuzzy head in the shower — so much came to mind that Steven found himself flooded with thoughts when he didn’t want or need them.

The man opened his black eyes as he realized what he had to do. If this was the transition, then he needed to go back to the moment. He panted for a moment, quelling the burst of panic that popped into his chest. He didn’t want to go back, but he had to remember what he had been and what that meant he could become now.

Steven thought about that first sensation when he had knelt on the ground and felt his back explode. Immediately, in the present, his spines tingled with anticipation. The man dug his hands into the wood, curling it into shavings as his claws gripped. Control, control. What did he remember about the body? He remembered the pain of transformation. When he shapeshifted, he took what was there and simply made more. Becoming the beast, and becoming the monster, meant the creation of new nerves at an astounding pace, far beyond what he could handle. The monster that had walked the beach had experienced a trillion trillion new nerve endings, cells upon cells, all wracking its body.

Where were the specifics? They came to mind as they came to Steven’s body involuntarily. The man raised his head and whined as he felt the long tail emerge. His hips ground apart, the pelvis spreading as new vertebrae were birthed down his back and the muscles grew out. He could feel the scales spreading up, like a silky cobra, to cover his back and backside. Skin crawled and sunk into itself. The tail whipped behind him, three feet long and studded with spines of its own. 

There were more spines to come. Steven raised his arm and watched in horror as the blades emerged from his skin. It turned pink. The muscles bulged and rippled, and he could feel it around his bones. Everything became more solid, horribly so, but his skin’s texture was what he felt the most on the outside. He watched as the human arm disappeared and the beast’s bulging turned into the monster’s strength.

Steven fell onto his side, his tail smashing into the floor as he struggled to retain his balance. Immediately, the impact sent a shockwave through his skin, and the man raised his head to suppress a howl of pain. He was massive. The nerves were there again, making his spine tremble and his skin shake. It felt like every part of him was on fire with newness. It was like being born again, out of darkness and into mortality. His legs trembled. As he looked down in horror, he could see his elongated feet, feel the toes clump together and bend horribly. They elongated, the knee and calf crunching together as his heel raised upwards, closer to the back of his leg. He was becoming digitigrade. Steven kicked and whined at the air, his tail thrashing and sending up wood splinters.

The whining turned to screaming as his mouth began to move. Steven felt his lips pulling away from him, muscles rippling in the back of his jaw, strummed like a guitar string by his howls. His nose raised up and the bones separated as they fused with his upper lip. The man had no choice but to lie down and squeeze his eyes shut as his face contorted against his will. This was the animal transformation, the true monstrosity. Around his head, Steven could feel his hair actually growing, becoming wild and manelike. In front of him, the skin and bones stretched out. His jaw elongated to accommodate his predatory nature. The teeth extended into tusks emerging from his mouth. From his jaw, Steven felt an explosion of the two familiar tusks, the horrible protrusions he had felt before. Now they were mere inches long instead of the feet before, but the sensation was familiar.

That was all it was. As the muscles and bone ground to a halt, Steven couldn’t help but think that this was all so familiar, but not the same. He felt like a werewolf, mammalian, not the inhuman reptile that has torn up the town, but his skin was still scaled and his tail was as long and arduous as an old dinosaur sketch. His teeth were made to tear out meat. There was a pressure that he couldn’t face, something he couldn’t make sense of. Steven reached out towards the nothingness as if he could call for help, opening his eyes. He wanted to go back.

Two sounds snapped him into silence. The first was the cracking of leather and the sound of his collar finally breaking. The leather strap could only retain so much, and Steven’s entire body twitched as he felt it break off his neck. How had he not noticed it before? The charm and the shredded leather fell to the ground with a soft thump and tinkle, as the door to the garage opened.

The noise pierced Steven’s ears. He raised his paws to cover them, rolling onto his side. They were pointed now, curved and curled like an animal. He was no longer the beast. The world was made of vibrations, just as he was vibrating in fear. 

First, he sensed the door opening. Second, he sensed the noise in the air, Connie’s voice traveling over, suddenly stopping. The footsteps running over to him made him open his aching eyes. Connie was kneeling in front of him. Her hands were stiff in front of her, raised as she wanted to touch him but couldn’t. Steven turned his head to look into her face, but she was so blurry behind his tears.

Connie reached down and stroked a finger along his jaw. Her mouth opened. Steven heard the words blur together, but couldn’t make them out. The beast reached with one massive paw and held it up against Connie’s face. He heard the vibrations of the air as Connie smiled. He sensed every tear that ran down her cheek, feeling them drop to the ground.

The first thing that turned back was the hand against her face. As the muscles shrunk, as the scales started to fade in agonizing slowness, he heard the words for the first time.

“I’m here,” Connie was saying, her voice as fragile as light. “I’m here. I love you. I’m here.”


	9. Her Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steven and Connie consummate.

* * *

Connie clipped the leash onto Steven’s collar. The man growled appreciatively, his voice turning into a high-pitched whine of excitement. The woman could only smile, reaching up to ruffle the unkempt mane of hair.

There were four collars now. The first one, for human play, was a thick neoprene-lined leather strap that rested on the bureau. The one that Steven wore around the house, with his little star charm, was laid out with his clothes now. They had opted for a slightly larger variant for the beast, one with rhinestone studs and an adjustable length. The one Steven was wearing now was even larger, big enough for the bulging muscles of his neck.

When she had first come in and seen Steven on the floor, Connie recognized him immediately, though it was hard not to be shocked. Where the beast was easily six and a half feet tall, the monster she had walked in on was seven feet at least, as wide as the doorway itself. The pinkness that covered him had made her fear the worst, but she knew exactly what Steven had done and what he needed from her.

He was her beast, still. She couldn’t let her mind think of him as something else, even though the appearance was dramatically different. Flat toes raised to an elongated bend, buckling to Steven’s knees. His digitigrade legs were bent now as he knelt as best he could in front of her. His nipples were gone, replaced with scaled plates over his pectorals. Connie was reminded of a tegu or boa, a warm tropical species of some reptilian creature. All over Steven’s skin were those micro-scales, and when she gripped them they gave under her fingertips as much as the muscles could. Steven’s whole body glistened slightly. The tail curled behind him, covered in spikes. One by one, Connie had had to go over and touch the places on Steven’s body where the crystal spires jutted out, on his elbows and back and tail, and one by one the man smoothed them for her. There was nothing sexy about impalement.

The most noticeable change was the head. Besides the neck, Steven had a sort of snout now, almost mammalian but not quite. His hair seemed shorter, but it was really just pulled back on his scalp due to the transmogrification of his skull. There was a clear delineation of the nose as its own separation on the body, slits where Steven could breathe. Inside his lips, Steven’s teeth were sharp and raw, meant for devouring prey that didn’t exist. On the sides of his mouth jutted the tusk-like structures that Connie had also smoothed into fine oval points. She had allowed him to keep the horns on his head sharp. He crouched with his hands on the ground and his eyes raised upwards penitently.

Connie sat with her legs dangling over the end of the bed. She looked down at her husband and smiled. 

“If you want to cum, you’re going to have to work for it,” she purred. “Give it to me, and I’ll think about fucking you. Can you do that? Can you be a good boy?”

The man’s mouth opened to a little ‘o,’ as much as he could make with his mouth, and he howled so softly, like a puppy learning how to make itself known in the shadow of a siren. Connie spread herself outwards. Nudity came before a strap. Online, she had considered a leather corset, but they seemed so bulky. Maybe once they got into the public playspaces they would dress up. For now, her own skin and Steven’s was the way to go. Connie glanced up to the pillow where the strap and toy rested.

There were practical benefits to all of this. Steven’s size increase meant that he could take things that he never would have been able to as a human without significant training. The novelty dildo that sat in Connie’s strap now was a good ten inches and as thick as her bicep. It was the largest toy that they had thought about using, and Connie couldn’t even get it in when she had tried by herself. It took magical efforts for magical results.

Before they had even considered this, Steven and Connie had had to talk about the sexual aspect of this form. The beast’s body, this ultra beast, was something closer to the teenage form, something Steven hadn’t experienced in years. And, he had admitted, it was terrifying.

“I saw myself through my own eyes in a way I hadn’t since that day,” Steven had said, sitting on the floor in his own sweat. “I… It was the perspective I had been afraid of, for so long, and it was there again, but...different now. Everything’s different now, because we’re…”

“Because we’re married. Because it’s about sex.”

“Because we recontext… Re… Whatever the word is. We changed what it meant. It’s got to do with sex. Heh, I...would never have thought, when I was a kid. It’s still kinda hard to imagine now. Did you think about fucking that big monster when you saw me on the beach?”

What mattered was that she was fucking Steven now. There was, of course, something wrong with her that she was attracted to the hulking creature on the end of her leash. Connie couldn’t begin with herself, couldn’t begin to think about what weird experiences had led her to a place where she was comfortable and engaged with this. The fact of the matter was that she was tugging the man’s snout closer and closer to her body, and he was crawling on his paws with a tail twitching behind him in excitement.

Every living thing had a kind of beauty. Connie appreciated the musculature of a lion, the curve of a lily’s petals, the compound eyes of a carnivorous dragonfly. It didn’t mean she wanted to fuck any of those things. Steven brought with those qualities a degree of fantasy. Maybe it was the Gems who had led her down this path in the first place. Her books as a child had led her into worlds where animals and humans coexisted, where there were different species living in harmony. Combining that with the notion of this alien species was something that led her to a place of acceptance, where she could look at a creature like Steven and imagine herself falling in love.  _ The Beautiful Beast  _ had shown children that true love came from within. The animators probably hadn’t imagined anything like this.

When Steven brought his face against her groin, the curves of his tusks almost began to rub against Connie’s thighs. His elongated muzzle was just enough to ensure that there was some distance, though he wasn’t as dramatically changed as something like an alligator or a bird. His hot breath almost made Connie shiver. 

The tongue that came out to lap over her lips was wide and pointed, sticky with magical drool. Steven’s mouth opened wide to get as much tongue out as he could, teasing at the entrance, slathering her skin in saliva. Connie held fast to the leash. She could control the way her body reacted, no matter how good it felt, no matter how out of control she wanted to be.

It mattered to her that she was the mistress of the bedroom, that she stay focused. The best part about sex was that the pleasure and the action were one and the same. Once, Connie had been worried that she would be too focused on making sex good to actually enjoy it herself. The pleasure of a partner had been the most important in her mind. To enjoy sex meant to become one, like all the pleasure of fusion without the physical aspect — or rather, with a different physical aspect. 

Steven’s tongue felt so different now. When he was human, he loved to perform for Connie, using his mouth as best he could. As the beast, they had experimented a little, but they hadn’t had much time to do it. In his second form, Connie could feel every inch of the tongue sliding around her body like Steven was going to devour it. He opened his mouth and leaned it forward, rubbing his upper lip over her clitoris and sucking the folds as much as his animal anatomy would allow. 

He was so big that his mouth covered the entirety of her external organs. Connie tugged on the leash as she leaned back in pleasure. Steven growled in response and shimmied his torso. Having a tongue worming its way inside of her, a living insertion, was so much different than a penis of any kind. It felt so warm, like another creature entirely. The shape was different, malleable, able to ease into all of her cracks and crevices.

“G-get in there. Fuck me with it,” she commanded shakily.

Steven raised his eyes for a moment, blinking slowly. It was compliance, love, like a cat would do. They certainly couldn’t communicate while Steven had his mouth occupied, certainly not when any words were lost to his form. They had briefly gone over the bestial communication before, with Steven’s various grunts and whirs. It was beautiful to hear his body in motion. The trust they had to form was more than anything they had done before in all their years together.

A faint glow shone from the outside of Steven’s lips. Connie’s eyes rolled back in her head as the tongue began to worm its way inside of her, shapeshifting beyond human or animal capability. It was magic in her pussy in the most literal sense. The sparkling saliva worked its way around her walls as Steven penetrated her with his tongue. The muscle opened to welcome him. He shifted it to taste her insides, licking the inner walls as he gently widened himself for pleasure. 

With his paws, Steven reached up to wrap them around Connie’s thighs, pink on brown, his curved claws pressing into her skin. While he sucked with his lips, he began to wriggle his tongue like a dancer. Folds met folds, muscle met muscle, and wetness met its match. Every inch of Connie’s insides were soaked with his tongue. She felt her g-spot vibrated by Steven’s purring. He was making some sound, some noise muffled by his stimulation, and it was resonating through Connie’s whole lower body.

The woman had to bite her lip. She could handle the roughness. In his human form, Steven was a formidable lover under the right pressure. They had experimented in their honeymoon phase with varieties of positions and pounding, but nothing like this. Steven was doing his best to be gentle now, as gentle as he could be, but with a specific kind of recklessness Connie couldn’t place. He was tongue-fucking her like how a hummingbird collected nectar, with a delicate need defined by his form, as if there was nothing else he could possibly be built for. As he pushed as deep as he could go, Connie felt the obscene undulations overtake her.

She didn’t last long. With Steven’s tongue and the way that he was lapping at her body, the first orgasm came within minutes. Time was elusive and illusive. It didn’t matter how long either of them lasted as long as they were both satisfied. The muscles in Connie’s legs tensed up with warmth, filaments soaked with pleasure that ran down her limbs in an electric rush. The pit of her stomach fluttered with feeling.

Inside of her, the walls felt stuffed to the brim, but the softness of the penetration made it so that everything was perfectly aligned. The paws on her legs tightened just slightly. Steven could probably feel that she was at her climax. He growled deeply into the pussy and resonated his noise and feeling over her clit. He was hungry for her, and Connie could feel his hunger in every stroke his tongue made. 

“Lord, Steven, c’mup. Let me…”

Connie tugged at the least. She gasped and felt her legs shaking like leaves in a hurricane as the tongue began to pull out of her. The hole could only take so much, stretching to its exerted limit as Steven lowered out. He let the tongue loll out of his mouth as he stared up and panted like a dog. He even looked like an animal, trapped in his transformation to a human, a were-creature on her leash. The tongue dripped onto the ground with her juices and his spit. Connie had to catch her breath as she reached down with her other hand and rubbed her aching lips.

When she could use her mouth again, Connie whistled gently and wrapped the leash around her hand to pull up. Steven pushed on the mattress and came up to eye level. He had figured out what Connie wanted. She didn’t even purse her lips in preparation for it. She just closed her eyes and opened her mouth as the tongue, the tongue that tasted like her, slipped over her lips. Its length shrunk as her husband came closer to seal the kiss. It was an impossibility, as his mouth wasn’t meant for kissing at this point, but Connie felt the pressure on her own regardless as their tongues entwined.

Inside Steven’s mouth was the row of sharp teeth. Out of all his qualities right now, Connie was fascinated with this one the most, running her tongue over each ivory tip. He had no need to rip or dismember, no raw meat that he had to tear apart. The physiology was purely psychological, a response to the carnivore as monster. His pacifist nature had manifested here in his mouth, a response to his fears. When he had been sucking her pussy, Connie had felt the nubs brush against her skin, and she knew that he couldn’t hurt a fly.

By the time they broke the kiss and their mouths slid apart, Connie was panting just like Steven. It was time. Connie began to push backwards on the bed, and she pulled Steven with her. The man clambered onto the mattress after her, following the tugging of his collar. His black eyes blinked obediently, little deep chirrups emerging from his throat.

When she got Steven on his hands and knees on the mattress, Connie held a finger to his lips. The man slurped his tongue back in and closed his mouth, eyes wide and curious.

“Wait just a minute, good boy.”

Connie dropped the leash, leaving Steven to his pouty little puppy whines as she slid out from underneath him and stood next to the bed. She pretended not to watch him as she prepared the strap, pulling the ensemble off the pillow. At this point she could get it on and off without much hassle, although the first time had been strange to say the least. It was a complex mechanic. The black dildo wobbled obscenely as she pulled up the straps around her thighs. 

Over the past few days, she had had to talk to Steven about whether or not he could handle this at all. They had had to be honest, and Connie had chastised her husband severely about his decision to transform without knowing whether or not she was going to be home anytime soon. But in private, as she watched Steven sleep, Connie had realized that perhaps he had had to do it alone. With her there, he wasn’t in danger. The feeling of loneliness had been the spark that had set him ablaze the first time, on a pyre of other repressions and traumas. Steven had Steven now as much as he could ever have himself. But he had Connie, too, and that conversation had led into Connie’s side of this coin and her fear.

Controlling her husband wasn’t just about strength. Connie’s needs had to be met, too. She needed the feeling of an equal footing, that Steven was happy with her decisions and that he could be taken care of. Connie didn’t enjoy being treated like Steven did. She could never submit to him, never in a million years. That dominant side of her coming out in the bedroom was so eye-opening. Not in a million years could she have experienced that without someone like Steven in her life, someone who was willing to go that distance with her while maintaining a sense of love. Connie loved Steven so much for all the things he was willing to do with her — not  _ to _ her, not  _ tangential  _ to her, but with her. To have him as a lover was to be complete.

The man, the beast, watched as Connie grabbed the bottle of lubricant from the nightstand. She popped the lid and dribbled it over the toy jutting out from her waist. She couldn’t imagine being a man with a penis actually this big. The weight of it all was pulling on her. Thankfully, she would just be lying down for this. Steven was going to be the one doing actual work. 

As she climbed back onto the bed, she clicked her tongue, and Steven moved out of her way to let her onto the mattress. The woman slid underneath him, feeling the massive length of Steven’s monster cock dribble against her body. If she were bottoming today, he would have had to shapeshift to something more manageable. His size alone would be something to take into consideration, but the cock was a little too much. She glanced between his legs as she slid into place. The whole thing was discolored almost purple, pink at the swollen head, looking almost as alien as Steven was right now. She almost didn’t notice the gemstone embedded in his belly, the same color as his scales. 

“My good boy,” Connie murmured up at him. “Get ready for me, Steven. I’ll get you nice and ready for me.”

The beast raised his legs and shifted his hips. His tail raised into the air as he brought the pucker of his anus against the slippery toy. With the bottle still in her hand, Connie poured some into her palm before sliding it down. Steven towered over her now, hands pressing into the mattress on either side of her head. She felt like she was barely able to reach for the hole. Where his human half had been small and as tight as ever, Connie found herself bringing three sticky fingers up to the man’s rear end.

She curved her hand and pressed until the lube forced the sphincter to give. The growl from Steven’s throat nearly shook the bed. All she had to do was give the outside a good oiling, but Connie enjoyed her fingers sliding up against the smooth skin. It was a sensation unlike anything on Earth. She was the first and only human to fuck something like Steven, and her heart pounded with the thought.

Steven rocked against her fingers, as if he wanted to take even more from her hand, but Connie tapped the hole and raised her hand again. The beast grumbled like thunder, deepness turning into a whine again as Connie positioned the toy. The bulbous black head started to push against Steven’s anus, and she sensed his muscles trembling, his body preparing to take the girth.

“That’s my good boy. Slow, just how your mistress likes it. Take it all, good boy.”

He woofed as the head sunk into him. Connie could feel the weight of Steven’s hips, the muscles of his powerful legs lowering him onto her cock. She wished she could feel the spread and the tightness for real; for now, all she had was the power of Steven fucking himself. She shushed his whines as he lowered onto the thickness. It would almost be too much if he wasn’t the size that he was, the magnificent size, every inch of his body primed and ready to submit to his wife and lover Connie.

After a minute of pushing and prodding, Steven’s balls hit Connie’s abdomen. The woman reached up to grip her lover’s hips as he bottomed out. He had finally taken all of her. His hands raised up to press against the wall, head raised, leash dangling. The head of his erection swung over Connie’s face, big enough as it jutted out over her. Its human shape was strange to see on such a body, despite the throbbing veins and vibrant colors that gave it an otherworldly appearance. 

Connie popped the bottle one last time, spreading lubricant all over Steven’s cock before she let the bottle fall to the floor. They weren’t going to need it for the rest of the night. Steven let out a mighty growl as Connie massaged the lube all over his length, over every fresh and bulging nerve. She knew he wanted to bust so badly, but he was holding back. The thickness and lengthiness made Connie feel like she was holding a cannon. She knew she was going to get a mouthful and a half when she was done.

“Ten minutes,” the woman called, “and you can cum. But you’re going to have to be a good boy for me. Now ride.”

On his knees, tail raised, Steven began to rock. The grip of his sphincter sucked the base of the dildo away from Connie’s groin before he brought it back down, slamming the scales against her hips. He moved like a piston as he was fucked by his wife, pegged into animal obedience. Connie stroked him with both hands as he moved. She used his precum and rubbed her palm around the glans. The sounds Steven made were incredible.

The whole bed was shaking with momentum. This massive creature, bigger than Steven could ever hope to be as a human, bigger than the beast he had been so afraid of, whined like a dog as he rode the dildo. Connie let go and grabbed the leash, tugging to remind Steven who he was fucking himself for. Each tug got a new pant, a new whimper. The frame creaked underneath them, wood begging for an alleviation to the pressure of their sex. There was no letup. Steven was ready to submit entirely.

Connie didn’t even bother to check if Steven heard her soft whispering, her  _ that’s it _ s and her  _ you’re doing so good _ s. He was in his own head. Connie wondered what he was thinking of, if thoughts were even present, or if he was giving in to submission as animal instinct. The mental space was unexplored. As a transformed teenager, Steven had felt so much pain. Here, as evidenced by his eager pumping, he was full of pleasure.

That was what mattered most to Connie right now. Steven’s pleasure was her own. The manner of his motions spoke to her as she tugged on the leash. Every pump of his legs, every strain in his hips, made Connie love him even more. He was trying so hard for her, and it was arousing in a way Connie couldn’t ever articulate. Her heart was full of pleasure, even as her body was thrown about by her husband.

Time meant nothing. When Connie brought the leash and her hand down to start stroking Steven, the cock throbbed to attention. It had smeared transparency all over the woman’s collarbone already, dripping with pressure. Steven huffed above her, his throat creaking and his arms shaking as he pressed into the wall.

“Let it go, Steven. Cum for me! That’s a good boy…”

The beast increased his pace and pitch. Connie felt the whole mattress shaking with how much Steven was riding. She never increased how fast she was stroking, but she squeezed the bulging tissue, pulling the skin back and forth as the shaft twitched in her face. It was about milking Steven’s pleasure for all it was worth. It was about forcing his pleasure on her terms, making him learn control. Steven opened his mouth and slammed his rear end down onto the dildo. Connie felt the breath knocked out of her, the tail slamming on the mattress in between her legs. She didn’t stop stroking. He deserved this.

The man’s urethra swelled up under her fingers as he reached the tipping point. Each orange-sized ball clenched close to Steven’s body as he came over Connie’s face. The pressure to get all the way down his cock must have taken magical force, the same force which pumped out a thick, pearly load right onto Connie’s mouth. She opened it and let the thick saltiness fill her up. There was so much more than he could ever hope to make as a human, and he didn’t skimp on it, either. Connie had to swallow and open up again as Steven roared in pleasure above her. His cock pulsed with agonizing pleasure, rife with heat and power. Cum dripped out in dollops, several seconds of release covering Connie with whiteness from her lips to her breasts. The woman felt the orgasm fill Steven’s body just like the dildo filled his hole, the white-hot climax rocking his muscles and skin, burning him up on the inside. She gripped the cock gently, her fingers covered in fluid and shaking along with her husband. Steven panted as the throbbing subsided. Connie swallowed once more, feeling the thickness travel down her throat to her stomach. She could never have swallowed it all. 

Letting go of the leash, the woman rubbed Steven’s thighs softly. He cooed and whirred, tongue dripping exertion onto her forehead. She looked up and saw the clawmarks where his hands had scraped the wall. Everything could be fixed. Everything could be repaired. 

“Steven, you did such a good job, baby,” she breathed. “Come down here, come down with me.”

The beast scooted forward, rubbing his softening cock against the mess of Connie’s face as the toy slid out, inch by inch. Connie felt the pressure on her body alleviate, and she hadn’t realized just how heavy Steven was until he was up and off of her, whimpering as the toy slipped free with a wet plop from his anus. There would be lots of cleanup to do later. The toy could be cleaned, and they could shower all the semen from Connie’s face. The bed probably reeked of sweat and sex, although they couldn’t smell it in the moment.

This was still ‘the moment,’ after all. The beauty of the afterglow filled up the room. Connie closed her eyes as Steven scooted down like a pet, taking up so much of the bed as he laid next to her. The man nuzzled her cheek with his snout, chuffing in thanks. Connie turned her head to kiss him, wet lips meeting his own. She felt sore, despite having done so little work. The weight of Steven was hard to carry. It always had been. 

They didn’t need to sleep, but they needed to rest. Steven pulled Connie towards him, forcefully turning her onto her side. It took no effort for him to maneuver her however he pleased. The strength, the gentleness, it astounded Connie how much power there was in this form. But there always had been something about Steven, something inside of him that scared her.

Whatever scared her was quashed by her love. Her fear of losing Steven was nothing compared to the love she had with him in her life. Whatever Connie was afraid of didn’t exist anymore. The beast could be tamed. The beast could tame himself. Steven’s desire for control had been met, and Connie realized that Steven probably had no idea how good this was for him. His fears had roots, gnarled and black, that reached into the recesses of his brain and had turned his childhood inside-out. To become an adult was one of the hardest things Steven was still learning how to do. Connie felt a strange perverse satisfaction in knowing that they could take care of some of this through sex. Sex therapy, what a concept — and whether or not Steven thought of this as therapeutic was up in the air, still. There was so much for them to talk about when he was a human. There was so much more that Connie wanted to so. She wanted to feel that orgasm raw inside of her, get her own tongue tasting the hold, hold Steven’s spiky tail as they shared a toy between them and rode out their pleasure together.

But wasn’t it always pleasure together? Connie closed her eyes, just for a moment, as she felt the animal arms wrap around her. The feeling of scales on her human skin was soft, warm-blooded, wild. On her side, still dripping, Connie held one of her husband’s hands up to her chest and pressed it against her sternum so he could feel her heartbeat. She could feel his own heart pumping as he held her close. It was enormous, powerful, a rhythm she could dance to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are at the finale! I would like to thank the wonderful artists and sponsor of this fic for making it happen. This is my largest project and I'm proud of how things turned out.

**Author's Note:**

> What a monumental project! Thanks to Rainsans, Sharkman and Bork for all their help in making this story come alive <3 Comments are always appreciated.


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